


Truce

by K_iddo



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: (MAJOR canon divergences later on), Alcohol, Attempts at Mutual Understanding, Conversations, Cults, Dialogue Heavy, Drugs, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, John's alive, Joseph Seed is engaging and that pisses the Deputy off, Joseph isn't right about everything, Parley, Recreational Drug Use, Religion, Reluctant crushes, Truce, Very Brief Deputy/Eli Palmer, Violence, canon divergences, sinning, what if the apocalypse isn't coming after all?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_iddo/pseuds/K_iddo
Summary: Alma wishes she wasn’t affected at all by his mystique, but she is. Convinced by it, no, affected, yes, in some way she can’t put her finger on but that makes her feel uneasy just to be in his presence.The Deputy wants to understand Joseph Seed, but fears it may be impossible. He wants to understand her as well, and hopes he can find some salvation for her in that understanding.They agree a temporary truce, 30 minutes, to meet and talk without weapons or allies. The Deputy agrees.
Relationships: Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed, Joseph Seed/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 82





	1. 30 Minutes

A parley, half an hour and not a minute more. 

He’d asked her through the radio, a private frequency no one else could hear, he’d said, that eerily gentle voice waking her up from an uncomfortable sleep in the back of an old truck. Just them, no allies, no disclosing where they were, no weapons. The perfect chance to stab him in the face then, or choke him to death. Choking him to death was the image that came into her head the most. 

Her voice had caught, and it had taken her a few minutes, but she agreed to it, asking him where and when. He told her the coordinates, and she found it on her map; a cabin by a lake she is familiar with in Jacob’s territory, quiet and secluded. A place to parley, alone, with Joseph fucking Seed. 

Now she sits in the Spread Eagle the night before their meeting is scheduled, working on her whiskey and coke and listening to the hum of her friends’ conversations. What was once John’s island is now entirely Resistance territory, the last symbols of the cult are still sometimes found, and quickly destroyed, but the cultists themselves know how well fortified the part of land is now and not to step foot anywhere near. John is in hiding, god knows where, but that’s fine, he’s taken so long to lick his wounds that the power he had is crushed to dust. His ‘YES’ sign is scrap metal, his ranch is the Deputy’s new preferred base. One down. 

The safety of this area has made Fall’s End the place she comes to feel like Alma, not just the Deputy. Here, she can listen to the jukebox, sit back in the booth and play cards with Nick and Grace, let the alcohol warm her bones. 

But relaxation doesn’t come to her on this particular night. She feels like she is keeping a secret, it’s sitting on the back of her tongue the urge to just tell them ‘I am meeting with Joseph Seed tomorrow,’ but she knows what the conversation will be. Grace will offer to find a location to pop him from a distance, Nick will suggest an airstrike on the building, Sharky will tell her they should barbecue the motherfucker. 

And they would be right, of course, but… It doesn’t feel right. She really doesn’t think Joseph is going to go against his word and try to do the same to her. More than once, he’s had the opportunity to kill her and hasn’t. Of course, it could be a trap instead, hit her with some Bliss and drag her off for atonement.

But he’d said _‘I think we should try to understand one another without the influences of our allies. I think we should speak person to person.’_ And then. _‘I want to understand you.’_

And fuck if she didn’t want to understand him too. It’s been five months, five months of relentlessly fighting through this place and seeing horrors like she’s never seen before and trying to find some clarity. She’s found none. Alma often sits awake at night, thinking of Joseph’s words, thinking of his siblings and their philosophies and trying to make it make sense. 

She can’t, it doesn’t. So she watches the dawn come and goes about her day with frustration in her gut and pity for those who throw themselves in front of her bullets for this mess of a worldview, this utter madness.

“Somethin’ on your mind, Dep?” Sharky asks, tossing back the remainder of his beer. She snaps out of her reverie with a blink, and sniffs bracingly.

“Just thinking about that trek up to the mountains we’ve got next week, gonna need some serious firepower for Jacob.” 

“Firepower I got.” Sharky grins, and Alma forces a smile back at him.

Lying to her friends is not her preference, but they would never understand this. You don't make a truce with a man like him, even for half an hour. Alma isn’t sure she fully understands it herself. Maybe she thinks, somehow, she could talk this all away, convince him to step down, run off somewhere, tell his people to go home and get some fucking therapy. 

Worth a shot, right? 

She taps Nick’s shoulder and gets him to scoot out of the booth so she can get up.

“Calling it a night, folks.” She says, and pulls a wad of bills from her back pocket, setting it on the table. “Next couple of rounds are on me.” 

Some of them complain about her leaving early, some thank her for the drinks and wish her goodnight. Alma smiles to herself as she leaves, enjoying the cool breeze of the evening. This part she understands, the warmth of a found family, how good it feels when people have your back and love you. It's part of how Joseph draws people in. 

Her people don’t fear her like they do Joseph and his brothers, though, and they don’t fear the wrath of hellfire if they don’t follow her.

She gets in her Jeep and takes a breath before setting off. If she were still a cop, she’d be pulling herself over for driving over the limit. The thought makes her laugh to herself; the reasons she had joined the force and come here in the first place same so far away and stupid now. Five months, and she’s a completely different person.

She really has no idea what she will do if she survives this. How can she return to a world that abandoned her and everyone here? How can she forget what she’s seen?

Alma turns on the radio to try and shut out her thoughts a little. The lake is in Jacob’s territory, so she’ll go to the outpost closest tonight and sleep there; camping out in the open in his land is reckless and only done in an emergency. _The Crystals_ play through the speakers, and she smiles to herself; she'd always enjoyed soul music, that part of herself isn't changed at least. 

"He's always good to me, always treats me tenderly 'cause he's not a rebel, no, no, no..." She sings along quietly to herself, tries to calm herself for tomorrow. 

They’re meeting at 6am, she and Joseph, so she’ll be able to get there unseen, stay off road, keep her radio off. 

Alma does not sleep that night, chewing the inside of her mouth and looking out of the window of the little bedroom she’s fashioned in this old house the Resistance have taken as their own. All the things she needs to say to him, all the things she wants him to understand play through her head over and over, and she still doesn’t know if she’s going to be able to articulate it when they’re face to face.

The sun rises, and it reminds her how beautiful Montana really is, distracting her for just a moment from what is coming. She hopes she’ll be able to speak when she’s pinned by those bright blue eyes again, she hopes she can keep her head when that low voice sends a chill up her spine. Alma wishes she wasn’t affected at all by his mystique, but she is. Convinced by it, no, affected, yes, in some way she can’t put her finger on but that makes her feel uneasy just to be in his presence.

When the time comes, she heads to the cabin on foot, pulling out her map occasionally to check she’s going in the right direction. 

She finds it. It looks untouched by the conflict here, a little cabin overlooking the lake with a small fishing deck, flowers surrounding it. Alma wonders who lived here and where they are now.

With a steadying breath, she approaches, eyes scanning the surrounding trees for movement, listening closely for voices inside. Looking at her watch, she sees she is right on time, exactly 6am. He must already be here, he’ll have wanted to be there first. 

Once she is fairly sure no one is in the woods waiting to attack, she approaches the building, stepping up onto the porch and taking her gun and her radio off her belt, letting them clunk to the ground by the door. If he’s inside, he will have heard. She’s keeping her word, she hopes he’s kept his. She sets a timer on her watch, 30 minutes. 

Chills spread across her skin and she braces herself as she opens the front door, almost expecting to find him standing at the other side of the room with his shirt off and his hands to the heavens; that’s the way she sees him in her head. 

He is there, but he’s acting stranger than that. The cabin is open plan, the lounge and the kitchen all one big room separated by an island. Joseph is in the kitchen, making coffee. 

Just a guy, making coffee in the morning. 

His head turns towards her when she steps in, but he doesn’t look directly at her. When she blinks, she sees the dead couple at Rae-Rae’s farm, she sees the death carried out in his name, and she feels the urge to launch herself at him and drown him in the sink. 

“Would you like a cup?” He asks, gently as ever. 

Mentally, she stomps the vicious urge under foot, because it will get them nowhere, and tries to forget her anger for a moment. A cup of coffee sounds good. Would he poison her? He doesn’t seem the type. 

“Sure.” She says, voice tight. She _does_ want a cup of coffee, and she doesn’t think he’s lying to her about this being a genuine truce for the next half hour. Joseph Seed pours her a cup of coffee, and she approaches on weary feet, her boots clunking on the hardwood. 

It’s probably best if they keep the kitchen island between them, she thinks, and he seems to think the same, setting the mug down on it for her, before turning his back to get his own.

“Sugar?” He asks her, spooning two into his own. 

This is so fucking weird.

“No.” She says, picking up the mug and trying to let the heat of it ground her to reality. When she takes a sip, she fights off the urge to curse. It’s a good cup of coffee, one of the best she’s had in a while.

“I always enjoy things that are a little too sweet, myself. A small vice.” Joseph says. He’s making conversation with her, small talk, and she doesn’t like it. It doesn’t feel right to act like this is… Normal. Like it’s okay for her to be here being civil with him after all he’s done. 

"You don't look like you eat a lot of sugar." She says, her knee-jerk reaction to discomfort being to joke, even if her expression is completely stony. 

Joseph does smile though, just a little bit, and it doesn't make her feel any better. 

“Why are we here?” She asks, still feeling entirely on edge. 

Joseph considers her for a long moment, looking right through her, it feels like. 

“To talk.” He says. “To try to understand one another.” 

Alma nods, considering him in turn. He looks smart today. Yellow glasses, black collar, grey jacket and pressed white shirt, but she still has the image of underneath burned into her brain. The tattoos, the scars of his sins intentionally carved into his skin; this man is not of sound mind, she has to remember. 

“Well, I know how much you like to speak.” She says. “So you first.” Alma sits down on the stool and rests her elbows on the island.

It’s also important to remember that she isn’t Alma right now, she’s the Deputy, and the Deputy isn’t intimidated by anybody. 

Joseph breathes out of his nose and rests his hands on the countertop, spread apart. Even with the object between them, she’s very aware of how close they are, closer than they have been since he stopped John from nearly drowning her in his baptism.

She even thinks she can smell him; clean linen and something else she can’t place.

“You have gotten to know my congregation over these past months, you have seen our work, read our teachings, killed a good amount of us. I wonder if you have gained any kind of understanding of why my group exists, of how my words are more than just words.” He looks her dead in the eye. “The Collapse is coming, Deputy, all I want is to save as many souls as I can.” 

It’s rhetoric she has heard before, and she fights the urge to sigh and roll her eyes. She could have heard this on the fucking radio. 

“You look disbelieving.” He says simply. Alma wants to curse again, _‘don’t fucking act like you know how I look,’_ she wants to say. But this is meant to be constructive, somehow, so she pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a breath. 

“I believe that you think you’re doing the right thing.” She says, and catches the look of surprise that flits across his face. "But I struggle to see the logic in the forced conversion, the violence that your people do.” 

Sipping the coffee is helping her relax, making her feel more like a normal person. He looks like he’s listening to her, so she will listen to him in turn. 

“My people will do whatever it takes to save souls for the new world. You speak of their violence like I control it. I try to guide their hearts but I do not guide their hands, I do not force them to hurt anyone.” He brings his cup to his lips and drinks. 

That isn’t going to wash with her.

“Oh, the Charlie Manson defence, perfect.” She laughs a little bit, shaking her head, composure breaking for the first time. Joseph doesn’t look angry, but his mouth has closed in a tight line as he swallows his coffee; he certainly is not _pleased_ with the comparison. 

“I know you see me as another madman cult leader, Deputy, but I am not here for my own ego, I am here for _them_ , for you, if you were willing to truly listen.” 

“No amount of talking is going to make me believe that God _truly_ told you the world is about to end.” She says, refusing to break with his gaze. “I’m sorry but that is something I will never be convinced of.” 

“Then don’t listen to me. Just look around you at the world outside. Look who we vote for to control us, look at the evil hands who hold all the power and the money in this world. Every day we ignore those who are starving, we use and wear things that were made by the hands of slavery… Surely you must see that all this evil and sin is reaching its breaking point.” He sounds like he did in those videos she watched before she came here, and like he does in his sermons.

And she can tell, like she has in the past, why people follow him. He promises _more_ , he promises _better_ , he promises open arms and love. 

But does he deliver it?

Alma realises that she has been quiet for a while, keeping in her head what she came to say here out loud. She wets her lips, and sets down her mug. His eyes follow her movements. 

“You say these words, and I find it hard to argue. Sometimes, in all your philosophising, you make a good point. This world _is_ terrible, those in control _are_ evil, the things that divide us only do us harm…” She stands, feeling the need to move, and he watches her.

“But then, I drive down one of your roads and I see the mangled corpse of a man hanging from a bridge with _your_ symbol branded on his chest. I walk into a cabin and find a young couple, dead, because your people shot them on site.” She paces, words tumbling from her mouth. “I remember watching your brother staple a piece of my friend’s skin to the wall; I remember walking through the mountains and finding a dead body mutilated in a cage with a starving wolf… And suddenly all your words mean nothing.”

Alma cannot figure out his expression when she looks back at him, hands on her hips. “So explain it to me. Explain the use of the terror, the blood, the atrocities. Because for the fucking life of me I can’t figure it out.” 

Joseph is quiet again for a moment, considering his words. She likes that he doesn’t automatically have something to say to that. She watches him walk round the kitchen island, palm running over his beard. The physical barrier between them is now gone. 

“There is no salvation without pain.” He says, finally casting his eyes down. Alma had expected more. She isn’t sure she’s ever heard him reply in just one sentence. 

The silence hangs between them in the room, she can hear her watch ticking on her wrist. 

“If people have to be tortured by you and your siblings to find ‘salvation,’ then perhaps you should stop bothering with the words at all.” She says, crossing her arms. “Just skip the pretence and go straight to the flaying, and the brainwashing, and the drugging.” 

“I am a preacher.” He says this more firmly. “I am a _true_ preacher, god speaks to me, I do not have to pretend.” 

“And yet your words alone are not enough.” She says, growing frustrated. Alma tugs down the front of her shirt, exposing the WRATH tattoo just under her collarbone, still sore, still ugly. “Your words alone are in fact, _nothing_ , when the torture is inevitable anyway.”

She keeps her shirt pulled down, caring not that the top of her breast is exposed. She’s making him look at the damage, a small piece of it. Joseph does look. “This I can live with. Others weren’t nearly as lucky as me, as you know.” 

“Proof of your resistance to atonement and looking directly at your own sins.” Joseph’s voice is soft again. 

“Hmm.” Alma says consideringly, feeling her pulse thrum in her neck. Why is she doing this? Why isn’t she just fucking killing him? “And what about when Jacob made me kill hoards of men and women to prove my strength and their weakness? Where does that fit into your philosophy of love and acceptance for all people?”

Alma doesn’t think she’s going to be able to stop talking now she’s started, finally right in front of his face. All these things she’s been thinking about and trying to figure out for weeks on end, and still he’s not giving her any real answers. 

She suspects real answers don’t actually exist when the man you want them from truly believes he talks to God himself. 

And now he isn’t talking, for _once_ he isn’t talking, he’s just looking at her, expression unreadable, and letting her get it all out. So she does, heart hammering hard in her chest feeling almost manic. 

She wants to grab his shoulders and shout it all in his face. But she settles for pacing, clenching and unclenching her fists. 

“When people run at me and my friends with knives and guns, do you know what they shout? ‘For Joseph,’ ‘For the Father.’ You claim to be bringing people to God but the last words not their lips aren’t his name. They built a statue of _you_ , not Him. I believe that you think this is about saving, but it’s not _just_ that, is it? It’s also about _you_. You like it, don’t you? When their eyes are wide and they almost weep in awe of you?”

Alma can feel the vicious edge creeping into her tone and it goades him into a reaction. 

“I do not-“

“You like it.”

“I-“

“ _You like it._ ” 

Joseph puts a hand on his hip and pinches the bridge of his nose under his glasses. She feels a satisfaction in watching him try not to lose his temper, as she is trying not to lose hers.

But there is no pulling back from her fury now, there is no stopping her mouth from just _saying_ it all. 

“I pity your brothers. They’re broken people, just like all the fanatics who follow you, and they don’t see your manipulation.” She’s back to looking him in the eye, and damn it, her throat feels dry, she feels like she could cry with the outpouring of emotion. "You don't really give a shit about them." 

“I love my brothers.” Joseph looks dangerous then, she realises how much taller than her he is. Despite his tone remaining calm, there’s an edge there, a look on his face that tells her she’s walking into dangerous territory. 

Good, let him lose his temper, let him attack her, fuck this truce. 

“You love them, and yet you use them, and you’ll replace them, just like Faith.” 

There is another moment of quiet, she hopes her words have cut him, at least a little. He takes a steadying breath and removes his glasses, closing them carefully before putting them in his jacket pocket. 

Alma is a little disappointed, she’s poised for a fist fight. 

“My siblings work in their own ways. We have to be pragmatic in our love, not everyone can be allowed through the Gates of Eden.” His hands clasp in front of him. 

“And you three are the ones to judge that?” She asks, calming somewhat.

Joseph has done that, she noticed, calmed her down with his tone and his body language. He’s fucking good at commanding a room, she’ll give him that. 

“We are agents of God.” Is all he says. The answer is weak. 

“God told you the world was ending, Joseph, he didn’t tell you to let those who couldn’t comply get eaten by dogs or burned alive.” She says, and exhaustion hits her. Exhaustion with him, with this fruitless conversation, with this whole fucking place. “You could preach your word and let those who don’t comply live out the rest of their days in peace, if you wanted. Even if those days were numbered.” 

“It is my duty to try and save as many souls as I can, Deputy, whether or not you agree with my methods of doing so.”

Alma can’t hold in the noise of frustration she makes running her hands through her knotted hair; the urge to grab him by the lapels is coming back. Had he not been a normal person once?

“ _Fuck_ . You heard God, these people didn’t. You must see that this is _impossible_ to believe for most people, you must see that it is not justified to eviscerate them for being unable to give up everything they understand about the world.”

The air in the room is incredibly thick, full of rage and emotion and frustration. Alma wants to leave, it’s too much, this was too stupid. Her friends would be so fucking disappointed in her for not killing him right now. 

Joseph is quiet again and he takes a couple of slow steps towards her. She resists the urge to step back, standing her ground even when there are only a few feet between them. 

“And what about you, Deputy?” He asks. Alma wishes he still had his glasses on, his gaze is too intense when unfettered by the yellow haze. “What is justified about the way you have gunned down so many of my people?”

Alma can feel his voice rumble inside her and she is pinned by the way he looks at her. She realises what he thinks, then, that they are the same. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t kill her, he feels some kind of kinship.

He will be disappointed to learn that kinship is not forthcoming. 

“Nothing.” She shrugs, letting out a disbelieving little laugh at the idea that there would be a justification. “I mean in ‘law’, if that means anything anymore, it’s self defence, I kill those that try to kill me... but morally?”

Alma looks past him, becoming aware of the ache in her arm from the kickback of her shotgun, and almost feeling the splash of warm blood on her face. She wonders how many people she’s killed now.

“Morally, these people don’t deserve to die.” She says. “They’ve been brainwashed, they’re fucking cannon fodder... That’s why I don’t sleep, that’s why I weigh about 20 pounds less than when I got here, that’s why I am desperate for this all to be over so I don’t have to pull the trigger on another unfortunate fool again.” 

Joseph takes another couple of steps towards her, until he’s looming, and she has to tilt her chin a bit to look up at him.

“My people are not fools.” And there it is, that dangerous tone, and there is also the desire to push it further. Words aren’t working, they need to hit each other. They need to fucking tear each other apart. 

So she looks him dead in the eye, smirks a bit, and does not back down. She’s so tired of all of this. 

“Anyone who eats your ridiculous, messy, nonsensical bullshit and swallows it is a fool.” 

Alma sees a slight twitch in his right eye, and she knows he would like to kill her right now. When he reaches for her, placing a hand on her shoulder and the other on the back of her neck, she gets ready to punch him in the gut and get this started.

But he doesn’t hurt her. He instead leans forward and presses his forehead against hers, his eyes shut, holding her there firmly, but not harshly. 

“Oh, Alma.” He says, his voice shaking and full of emotion. Her stomach flips to hear him say her name. She could have guessed he would have known it, having the police in his pocket like he does, but this is the first time he has spoken it. 

It’s too much, it’s too intimate to hear him say it. She would rather him see her as a snake, as the icon of their destruction than as _herself_ , a woman, a person.

Her face flushes hot, she feels her pulse in her neck and hears the voice in the back of her head screaming _‘don’t let him touch you! Bite his fucking nose off!’_

“You fight so hard against the inevitable, you fight so hard every day, for the respect of your people, for their love and to protect them,” his breath ghosts her lips and she wants to move away, but she doesn’t, and she isn’t sure why, “and yet you are still so incredibly sad. You have always been so, so sad.” 

Alma feels a truly painful tug in her chest, because he’s fucking right and she doesn’t know how. The thumb of the hand holding her neck strokes back and forth gently, and she finds herself leaning into him, keeping her forehead pressed to his and closing her eyes herself. She feels like she could cry, logic has gone out of the window, she has no idea what's happening. 

“If we weren’t in a truce I would wrap my hands around your throat and kill you.” She whispers, _needing_ him to know that. 

“Yes,” he murmurs, “and you would still not be happy.” 

Alma opens her mouth to say something, she isn’t sure what, but the watch on her wrist begins to beep, breaking her from whatever this is. She shoves him back, harsher than she meant to, feeling snapped out of a daze and looking at the watch in confusion. 

Her heart is hammering in her chest. 

“Half an hour is up, I suppose.” Joseph says, straightening his jacket, and sounding melancholy. 

“Hmm.” Alma hums in return, not looking at him, feeling strange. “I’ll leave first.” And she turns to the door, her ears almost ringing and a buzzing in the fingers she closes around the doorknob. She almost expects to begin to see stars in her vision and pass out, like Bliss or some other drug must be the explanation for this. But it doesn't happen, she is herself entirely. 

As she opens it, Joseph speaks, so quiet she might have missed it if the morning still weren’t so young and peaceful. 

“Do you believe me when I tell you that I speak to Him?” He asks her, and she will not lie to save his feelings. 

Without turning back, she answers simply. “No.”

“Then what do you believe I am? A monster?” 

Alma pauses for a long moment, really considers the question. The open door is letting the cold breeze make her feel more alert, helping her think better than she could when he had been holding her and she had been letting him. 

She looks back at him. 

“I believe that you are a man with severe untreated psychosis and the product of a terrible life, who has a gift for finding kindred spirits and bending them to his will.” She says. “That’s why I pity you the most, Joseph, you’re very sick, and you may be too sick to ever get better.”

Alma waits for a response, but she doesn’t get one, he just looks at her. So she leaves, closing the door behind her and picking up her gun and her radio. She doesn’t look back at the cabin; when she is only a few steps away, it already starts to feel like a strange dream.

She cuts an erratic path through the woods on the off chance he has anyone following her, and when she is back on track to the nearest outpost to get her Jeep, she switches her radio back on.

Silence, which is good, no one panicking and trying to find her since it’s still early and she could just be sleeping. Sleep actually sounds very nice right now, after getting none the night before and the emotional drain of whatever the fuck that was. 

When she gets on the path to the outpost, she hears the hiss of her radio, and raises it to her ear.

“I think we should speak again.” It’s Joseph. “For longer, next time.” 

Alma doesn’t press the button to answer yet, so he can’t hear her sigh. She presses the radio against her forehead, where his had just been, and wishes she could tell him to go fuck himself. 

“Alright.” She says, and clips the radio back to her belt. The morning breeze is fresh and bracing, but still, somehow, she can smell fresh linen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be real with you, I completed the game yesterday and it is absolutely consuming my mind, this poured out of me today and tbh, I'm not 100% sure where it's going but I have ideas, and I think it'll take a slightly more "realistic" direction than the game does in terms of events.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you liked this, it's my favourite thing.


	2. Lust I

Of all the reasons for Alma to be angry with Joseph Seed, him invading her dreams is probably a little unfair. With everything terrible he does, her unconscious psyche is really one of the few things he _doesn’t_ have any control over. That doesn’t stop her from feeling the anger though, when she wakes up with a jolt, heart racing and nerves fried.

It always starts the same, they’re in the cabin together, foreheads touching and his tattooed hands on her neck, but every night it changes in her head. Sometimes, his grip on her throat tightens until this thumbs are pressing on her windpipe, sometimes, it’s the other way around and she pushes him to the ground and watches the light leave his eyes.

But she cries while she does it, in her dreams, and she doesn’t think she would. She’s _sure_ she wouldn’t cry if she had to do it... When she has to do it. 

Those ones don’t wake her up sweating, though. This last one has. 

_‘Oh Alma._ ’ He had said, in that desperate, heartbroken way he had in real life. Heartbroken because he cares about her soul, and he wishes she weren’t going to Hell, she supposes.

In her dream his voice had been everywhere, filling the room, her head and her body. _‘All I want to do is save you, why won’t you let me?’_ Her dream-self had lifted her hands to his face and felt his beard under her hands. She had felt tears prick her eyes and a lump in her throat, and felt her nose bump his before she _kissed_ him, and he had responded like gasoline on a flame, wrapping her in his arms and pulling her to him, grabbing her thigh, lifting it to his waist. 

_‘I’m going to save you.’_

That was when she awoke, and ten minutes later she still sits in the middle of what had been John Seed’s large, luxurious bed, knees up to her chin and staring into the dark. 

She usually sleeps well here, it’s the place she comes to when she’s lasted too long on days of sleeping one or two hours at a time at best, and Sharky or Nick force her to take a day’s break. A little treat. 

Alma will chalk it up to too many nights of restlessness that caused this wholly unpleasant direction her mind decided to take when she had finally gotten into deep sleep, and she rubs her face with her palms and gets out of bed, going to the balcony to get a lungful of fresh air. 

It’s 3am, but there are still guards on patrol that she can see surrounding the perimeter, and she hugs the big shirt she wears for bed around her as the night air chills her pleasantly. When they first took over this place and found John’s neat, comfortable bedroom she never thought she’d be alright with sleeping in it, but a set of fresh sheets and one night on that mattress had quickly changed her mind.

Comforts are few and far between around here, so she appreciates this one, and silently thanks John for springing for a California King while preparing for the apocalypse. She hopes the bastard is missing it. 

_‘Oh Alma.’_ She wishes Joseph’s voice would get out of her head, and she wishes most of all that the kiss in the dream had been disgusting, that his beard had scratched and his mouth had tasted awful. 

Why did it have to be _good_? How could she think like that on any level about the man she hates above all others? How could she have enjoyed the mint on his tongue and the fresh smell of his jacket? 

“Being fucking stupid.” She murmurs out loud to herself. “Get over it, it’s a _dream_.” 

Going back inside feeling slightly huffy, she heads for the bed and gets under the covers, pulling them up to her ears. She’s not letting him waste a good night’s sleep just because it’s been so long she’s been laid that her mind is conjuring up _any_ man. Even _that_ one. 

Closing her eyes, she tries to think of someone else, anyone else. She feels like Sharky would happily fuck her if she asked him to, but they’re too deep in friend territory now for her to see him that way. She’d found Nick pretty hot when they first met, but likes and respects Kim too much to lie there and fantasise about him. 

So she thinks about that guy who had worked at the desk at her old apartment building, whose name she will probably never learn now; strong arms and cute nose, and slips her hand between her legs and closes her eyes. 

The word LUST flashes across her mind in angry red, she imagines the pain of it if someone carved it into her body, and lets out a frustrated grunt, pulling her hand away. Seed’s have to ruin everything, she thinks, even jacking off. 

Alma does manage to sleep fairly well after, though. The next day, after a long drive, she finds herself at the Wolf’s Den, making plans with Eli and the Whitetail Militia. There has been chatter that John is hiding with Jacob up in the mountains for protection, but Alma doesn’t buy it. She spends a lot of her time at his ranch exactly because of how nice it is, there is no way he could handle slumming it up in the mud. She suspects he has returned to Joseph’s side, knowing full well the Resistance is not yet ready to attack the compound. 

But she tells them she'll follow up and see if she can find out. Honestly, she can’t wait to get out of the bunker; the lack of air makes the place hot, and not the best smelling. 

It’s when she’s climbing the stairs to exit that Eli stops her.

“You seemed quiet back there.” He says, and she turns to face him. Shit, she hadn’t put Eli down as observant like that. 

“I’m good.” She shrugs, totally lying. Alma’s been on edge waiting to hear from Joseph for days, since he’d radioed and told her he thought they should meet again. “Just uh - thinking about Jacob, he’s not gonna go down easy.”

“S’why you’ve got us on side, Deputy, we’ve got your back same as you’ve got ours.” He claps her shoulder a bit too hard, but she smiles a bit anyway. 

“I know.” She says, letting out a sigh. _‘You’ve always been so, so sad.’_ She hears Joseph say. Fuck.

Eli must see something cross her face, because he frowns a little bit and runs a hand through his hair. 

“Hey, uh… You busy right now?” He asks, resting his hands on the pockets of his combat vest. 

“I’m always busy, Eli.” She laughs a little bit, shaking her head.

“Sure, I know, I know you are - but uh, you must have an hour to spare me. No missions, I promise.” He says, and he looks a bit sheepish as he scratches the back of his neck. “Got somethin’ to show ya.” 

Alma cocks her head and looks at him with amused intrigue.

“Okay, lead the way, I guess.” She says, and Eli smiles a bit and leads her up the stairs and out of the bunker. Alma follows him as he walks ahead, wondering what on earth he could possibly be showing her. She likes that he walks fast though, her travelling companions often complain about her rushing across the terrain, throwing herself down steep ledges before they can see where she’s gone. 

Eli clearly knows this area like the back of his hand, and doesn’t look back for her to see if she’s keeping up. 

They move through the woods, until Alma spots what they must be headed for. A wooden watchtower with ladders zig zagging up the middle, so tall she can’t believe she’s never spotted it before.

“Shit, how does this stay hidden?” Alma is in awe of its height as they approach, craning her neck to look at the top. 

She wonders who built it and when they did, how many trees it must have taken to whittle those stacks and stacks of polls and beams.

“Fuck if I know,” Eli says, approaching the first ladder, “strategic placement I guess, gotta be in the right spots to see the top - but standin’ at the top? You can see fuckin’ _everything_.” 

“That is a long way up some rickety ladders Eli.” She raises her eyebrow as he climbs on the first rung. 

“You do more dangerous shit than this every hour, please.” He rolls his eyes at her and starts climbing. “Don’t be a pussy.” 

That line really shouldn’t work on her, but obviously she’s feeling 14 years old today, because it does. With a sigh, she starts climbing up after him, one ladder after another, with the brief respite of each platform in between. Her legs are burning only half way up, which is a feat given how fit she is these days.

“I’m gonna - goddamn - kill you.” She pants when they’re on the last ladder, and he mounts the top, out of breath himself.

He laughs gruffly, and reaches out a hand to help her onto the up the last couple of rungs. 

“Not when you see this you ain’t.”

Her boots clunk on the wood of the top deck, and she walks to the edge, putting her hands on the barrier to catch her breath and dumping her heavy backpack on the ground. 

“Holy shit.” Alma says, shaking her head a bit. He’d been right, the view is beautiful; she feels like she can see the entire state of Montana, not just Hope County, and it takes her by surprise how beautiful it is. It is a gorgeous piece of the country, rolling hills and mountain peaks, so green and perfect it could almost make a person believe in God.

“Reminds you what you’re fighting for, huh?” Eli has sat down heavily in one of the two folding chairs that sits at the top, leaning back with his legs outstretched. He reaches down under the chair, and pulls out a bottle of rum, three quarters full. 

“No, this is what I’m fighting for.” She says, chuckling and going to her pack to pull out a couple of metal cups. 

“Well, you looked like you needed a drink today, couldn’t think of a better place for it.” He says, handing her the bottle so she can pour out two generous servings. 

The air is fresh, and she leans back comfortably in one of the chairs and tries to enjoy it, taking a long drink. She feels guilty whenever she takes a breath like this when there is so much that needs to be done. 

“Stop worryin’, will ya? Just take a breather for a minute.” Eli is certainly more observant than she'd given him credit for, reading her face like a book, apparently. 

Alma takes his advice, throwing back the drink until she finds the cup empty, and pouring herself another. It’s about halfway down that one she starts to feel a little tipsy, and realises that she’s been downright giggling while talking to Eli; they’ve never really had a casual conversation before, usually it’s all strategy and gunfights.

He’s laughing a lot too, it’s a nice, gruff sound, and at some point he scoops his hair out of his face and ties it back with an elastic. 

Aided by rum, Alma speaks before thinking. 

“You really need to get that beard trimmed, Eli, you’re obviously handsome under there.” 

She sees the look of surprise cross his face as he huffs out a little chuckle and looks down at his boots. 

“Didn’t know you looked at me that way, Dep.” He says, looking delightfully shy all of a sudden. That feeling is back, low in her gut, reminding her how long it’s been since she’s touched and been touched.

“Call me Alma.” She says, voice softening. Eli has his sleeves rolled up, and she looks at the tattoos on his thick forearms and rests her chin on her hand, pouting just slightly in the way that makes men look at her lips. "Just while we're up here, anyway." 

“Alma.” He says, with a short nod, and he does look at her lips. Alma fights off a satisfied smirk. She’s so used to being caked in dirt and sweat all day, it feels strange to try to flirt again, like she's become some kind of sexless being made for fighting and running. 

Maybe it’s the beautiful view that’s doing something to her, maybe it’s because she is only just noticing that he’s pretty hot, but she wants to feel like a woman for a bit. 

Really, they don’t have a lot of time; someone will come looking for Eli soon and she does need to get back to work, so she’s going to have to be blunt. This mountain man is surprisingly bashful. 

“Do you think I’m pretty, Eli?” She asks, scanning his face for his reaction. The rum makes her feel warm. 

“I - uh - shit.” He rubs the back of his neck, spluttering. “Yeah, course I do, you’re real pretty. You’re hot.” 

“Thanks,” she smiles a little and stands up, putting her empty cup down on the floor, “can I show you something now?” 

Never in a million years would she have guessed that this guy would go red in the cheeks at the sight of a woman coming on to him, but she is pleasantly surprised. He just nods, and she sits herself in his lap, straddling his thighs. 

Wasting no time, they both go in for the kiss, and he takes the initiative to hold her, pulling her tight to him with a hand on her ass and one on the side of her face. It gets heated quick, both very aware that it’s only a matter of time before Alma’s radio clicks and she’s dragged off somewhere else. His beard tickles her chin. 

“Shit, uh…” He pulls back a bit, hazy eyed. “I don’t - not to ruin the moment but - I ain’t got time for a girlfriend or anythin’, you know?” 

Bless his heart. Alma fights off the urge to laugh hysterically, and settles for a comforting smile and a peck on his lips.

“I’ve not got time for a boyfriend, Eli.” She moves her hips and feels his growing erection between them, making him groan. “Got about 5 minutes, special offer, today and today only.”

LUST

Eli breathes out a little laugh and squeezes her ass, nodding. 

“Well, alright then… But let’s call it 8 minutes at least, huh? Give me some credit.” 

It ends up being more like 10, but it’s good, it hits the spot exactly right, like that cold Sprite she’s been craving since she got here and not gotten hold off. The Seed’s, the zealots no doubt flocking around below and the rest of this whole goddamn place successfully fade away when Eli lays her down on the ground and fucks all coherent thought out of her. They don't undress, except for her jeans, and she holds onto the back of his combat vest and moans as loud as she wants to while no one can hear her. 

He’s quiet and efficient, and it feels good to have someone on her and in her, sucking on her neck and telling her she’s fucking gorgeous. 

When they’re done, and he’s spilled on the wooden floor beside her, they both laugh breathlessly and swipe the sweaty hair from their faces, adjusting their clothes and getting back to their feet. 

Her heart is still hammering when she swings her backpack onto her shoulders, and enjoys the slight jelly feeling in her legs. 

Eli shakes his head at her and says ‘damn,’ taking the elastic out of his hair and shaking it out with his hand. 

Alma feels a little sad when they’re back off the watchtower, but definitely better from having had a decent orgasm. 

“Well, Eli, thanks for showing a girl a good time.” She says, adjusting her backpack on her shoulders.

“Live to please, Dep, you are somethin’ else.” He leaves her with a tap on the backside and a peck on the forehead, and they go their separate ways into the thick trees.

She finds that she’s smiling to herself as she marches across the uneven terrain, pleasantly thrumming between the legs and a high flush in her cheeks. Eli gets it, they won’t be doing that again, best to avoid the risk of catching feelings, but it’ll be nice to remember, and the hickey she can feel forming on her neck will certainly remind her. 

“Dickhead.” Alma whispers to herself, shaking her head; the road is coming up, she’ll need to get her bearings to make her way to the nearest Outpost. 

“Hey Deputy, you doin’ good?” Grace’s voice crackles through the radio, and she brings it to her lips. 

"Real good. You need me for something?”

“I’m at the F.A.N.G Centre with Jess, she’s found some intel that there’s a Cult Outpost not far from here with the bazooka to end all bazooka’s in their stash, wondered if you were in for a little light robbery?”

“Always.” A rabbit thumps into Alma’s path, and she stops to let it pass. “Not really your style though is it? A bazooka? Not Jess' style either, actually.” 

“Oh it’s not for me, Hurk’s birthday’s coming up.” She says. 

“My lord, almost sounds like Hurk’s your friend. Didn’t think you had any of those.” Alma chuckles, squinting at a sign ahead by the roadside.

“Fuck you. Keep that up you won’t be getting a present on _your_ birthday.” 

“Oh, come on!” Alma complains. The sign tells her she’s not far from the F.A.N.G Centre, and luckily she won’t have to turn back on herself. 

“Well, smartasses don’t get presents.” She can hear Grace smirking. “You on your way?”

“Yup, give me like 45 minutes, I’d say.” 

“Sure, see you.”

Alma sighs, feeling too sweaty already as she continues her trek. It’s a pretty stupid to walk on the road, but so much easier on the legs than struggling through the uneven terrain of the woods. Her head fills with a song, she doesn’t think about much other than putting on foot in front of the other and the tingling next to her throat. Eli Palmer, giving hickeys like a teenager.

The click of her radio almost makes her jump, but no one speaks at first, she can just hear the fuzz on the other end. 

“Hello?” She asks, an unpleasant feeling creeping up the back of her neck at who she already suspects it is. When they don’t answer, she sighs. “I’m alone.”

“I would like to meet with you tomorrow, same time and place, if you’re not busy.” She’s surprised he even added that last part, like he cares about her sticking to her schedule of ruining his plans. 

“Okay.” She says, and replaces the radio on her belt. 

Way to ruin a good mood, asshole.

* * *

Alma, Grace and Jess did good getting Hurk’s little (not so little) birthday present. A couple of cultists knocked out, injured, but none dead; in and out without anyone knowing a thing. It’s her preferred way to work, and it made the victory a whole lot sweeter, even if the three of them did argue on who had to lug it back to the truck. 

Its stashed at the F.A.N.G Centre before the big day, Alma tasked a recruit with spray painting ‘The Hurk Locker’ on the side and the rest of it red, white and blue. He'll love it. 

Of course, she doesn't sleep before her meeting with Joseph, and gets there before him, which was a surprise. 

Alma decides to take a proper look around the cabin while she can; she hadn't really taken much of it in last time. It looks like a lot of other places around here, all wood panels and plaid furniture, cosy, not stylish at all. She goes to the kitchen and opens the fridge; everything inside is rotting, so she shuts the door quickly, screwing up her nose at the smell. Crossing back to the living room, she sits in the comfortable armchair and tries to relax. The impulse comes to put some explosives at the door and leave out the back, blow him up to hell, but it’s a weak thought because she knows full well she’s not going to do it.

No, she’ll look him in the eye when she kills him, it won’t be underhanded. 

It’s chilly, so she gets to her knees and makes a fire in the fireplace, stacking the wood high and being generous with the kindling. She warms her hands by it when it begins to roar, and sighs pleasantly at the feeling of it warming her through. 

When she sits back in the chair, she checks her watch and sees it’s coming up to 5:50am. Ten more minutes of peace before her sworn enemy arrives.

She tries to get comfortable, not quite as on edge as she had been last time, and outstretches her legs. Not sleeping all night is beginning to get to her; if she were here for any other reason, she might fall asleep.

The sound of boots on the porch make her sit up straighter, and when the front door opens and Joseph comes inside, he looks at her with a bit of surprise.

“You’re early.” He says, closing the door behind him.

“So are you.” She says, crossing her legs and looking at the fire instead of him, refusing to fall into the trap of seeing him as some kind of frightening thing, rather than just a man. 

Joseph shrugs off his jacket and hangs it on the rack by the door so he’s down to his white shirt, the sleeves of which he rolls up to the elbow. He doesn’t come to her, instead he crosses to the kitchen. She looks around the back of the chair at him, she doesn’t like him being out of her line of sight. 

“Coffee?” He asks, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like he’s just come in from work after a long day at the insurance company.

“Okay.” She says and turns back to the fire. 

_‘If I ever got in the same room with that guy I’d rip his head off.’_ She hears Kim saying.

_‘Get that motherfucker in my sights and it’s bye-bye Joseph Seed.’_ Grace’s voice echoes. 

_‘Some people just need to die.’_ Her own voice rings through her ears. 

And yet here they are.

Alma listens to the clinking in the kitchen as he works, and when he returns Joseph hands her the mug and they touch for the first time since she’d arrested him when their fingers brush on the sides. She wants to shiver from how strange it is, but holds it off, covering the reaction with a sip of coffee. Goddamn, he makes a good cup of coffee. He sits down in the chair across from her, knees apart and resting his elbows on them as he leans forward.

“What did you want to talk about?” She asks, not sitting forward herself. He’s not getting to her this time, she’s going to be cool as a cucumber. 

He pauses for a long time, as he often does. “It seems like such a long time since we’ve seen each other, don’t you think?” 

Not what she expected him to say.

“Not long enough.” She says, and sips her coffee.

“Hmm.” He smiles a bit in place of a laugh, and sips his own. “You do often speak harshly to veil your true thoughts. Or not speak at all, to stop people from getting to know you.”

Alma immediately feels annoyed at the attempted psychoanalysis, or religious consultation. 

She leans forward herself, mirroring him.

“Plenty of people around here know me and hear me talk. Three guesses why you aren’t one of them.” She makes sure to look him in the eye, although the fire is reflecting in his glasses.

“You must have had some desire to speak to me to agree to come here.” He says, and honestly, he’s got her there.

Alma covers her lack of an answer with another sip.

“Maybe I came here to do what I should have done last time and put a bullet in you.” She says, casting him a challenging eye.

“I believe you’ve left your weapons at the door. You don’t strike me as a liar.” He says. “Dishonesty is not one of your sins.”

“Then maybe I’ll beat you to death.” She says simply. 

“You could try,” Joseph says, “I am exceptionally good at taking a beating, though.”

Alma isn’t exactly sure how he knows that, and it strikes her quiet for a moment. 

“Besides, I don’t actually think you want to kill me.” He says. “I have been thinking, praying on it, and I don’t believe you want to kill anyone.”

“No, I don’t _want_ to kill anyone.” She says. “I’ve always believed in second chances and redemption, and that people deserve the opportunity to change their lives.” 

“I can see that in you.” He says, that intense gaze back. “Though you do violence, you do not have a violent heart.” 

Alma’s stomach feels strange, and she feels her heart begin to thud harder. Sometimes, it really does feel like he can see dead into her soul, like someone is whispering in his ear and telling him exactly who she is. She doesn’t like it. 

“Our parents, mine, Jacob and John’s… They had violent hearts, and cruel, very cruel.” Joseph leans back in the chair, resting a thoughtful finger on his chin. “They were the first of many in my life I encountered that were driven by true evil to put pain on others, on _children_.” 

Alma’s chest aches a little bit… not for him though, can’t be. 

“I know.” She says, and he looks at her with surprised interest, so she explains. “Before I had the stupid fucking idea I wanted to be a cop I was a youth worker. Ran groups for kids who’d been taken away from their parents, put in foster homes… Abused, terribly.” 

It’s been a long time since she has even thought about this, of those kids she had once cared so much about she’d had to quit her job rather than face another night crying herself to sleep over what she’d heard they’d been through. She shakes her head, wishing she could forget some of it. 

“So, when I first saw John and you together at my baptism - the way he looked to you for I don’t know… Protection? Absolution? I could tell, I could see it in his eyes.” She says, and she realises that Joseph has taken off his glasses, and is looking at her with something she can’t place. 

“A gentle soul, you have, under it all.” Joseph says, a smile in his eyes; she feels discomfort that she has somehow _pleased_ him with the revelation, so she decides to add a jab to it. 

“Well, it doesn’t take a genius to see you got messed up along the way. People with happy childhoods don’t usually end up running religious doomsday cults.” She puts her empty cup down on the coffee table with a clack and doesn’t look him in the face when she says it. 

“Hm, I suppose you could argue that those with the most hardship are more likely to be open to hearing God’s message.” He doesn’t get angry with her like she thought he might. 

“You could also argue that those with the most hardship are more likely to become psychologically damaged.” She says, and picks up her empty mug again before standing, reaching a hand out to him. “Another?”

He looks briefly confused for a moment, before she looks at the mug in his hand and he passes it to her with a nod. 

The look of bewilderment on his face was quite satisfying, but he follows her into the kitchen. Perhaps he doesn’t entirely trust she won’t poison him. That, or he sees her pouring them fresh mugs a diversion from the conversation. 

If they’re going to do this, talk to one another, she’s going to have to try not to push his buttons on purpose so much, tempting as it might be when he insists on trying to _know_ her. 

“Why did you give up being a youth worker?” He asks from where he stands behind her and she spoons two sugars into his cup.

Alma purses her lips, and fights the urge to tell him it’s none of his business. 

“Too hard.” She says, and is slow about pouring out the coffee from the pot, not wanting to look at him yet. 

“In what way?” He asks, prompting. 

“I… I like kids and I don’t like seeing them in distress.” She says. “And I saw them in distress every day, covered in scars some of them, before they were 13 years old.” Alma turns around and hands him his cup. “Only scars I had before as a kid were chicken pox.” 

Joseph chuckles a little bit and nods, looking like he’s thinking about something specific and far away. 

“You had a happy childhood, then?” He says, leaning back on the counter. 

Alma shrugs. “It was fine. We were poor and my parents were divorced but, they didn’t hit me.” She says. “I loved my ma.” 

“Where is she now?” Joseph asks, voice soft, and they’ve fallen into the patter of conversation enough that Alma almost answers him, before realising and shutting her mouth again. 

“That’s really none of your business.” She says. 

Joseph clearly sees her defensiveness and tries to alay it. “I was merely asking if she is still with us or in the arms of the Lord.” 

“Well, she didn’t believe in God so she’d been in the arms of the Devil according to you.” Alma’s tone isn’t biting, she says it with a bit of levity that he clearly doesn’t like. If she’s going to humour his personality, he’s going to have to do the same for hers.

She sits herself up on the counter across from him and starts drinking her second cup of coffee, gesturing to him to come and get his own. 

“You shouldn’t joke about such things.” He says, staying stood beside her after he gets his mug. “God has no patience for your humour.”

“God, or you?” She counters with a small smile. Joseph sighs and looks away from her. “You’re too easy to tease, Father, usually people with brothers are better at taking it.” 

“If it makes you more comfortable to tease, please go ahead.” He moves away from her an goes back to leaning on the opposite counter. “I just don’t necessarily believe that it helps you.” 

“Hmm.” She says, not arguing with him like she wants to. 

Joseph stands there for a while looking at her, and she looks back. She wonders if he’s thinking the same thing she is, that this is so strange, the two of them speaking while one or the other isn’t captured. She also wonders if he’s thinking, like she is, that this is never going to get anywhere, that they will _never_ be able to get through to each other. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking about.” He says, voice low and calm. 

Alma sighs. She needs to try and say something that will get through to him, maybe express some of the anger she has towards him that he doesn’t seem to understand.

“Thinking about this story my friend Jess told me when we first met.” She says. “About a guy who worked for your brother, Jacob, who went by the name of The Cook. He liked to burn people, made two children eat their parents cooked toes without knowing it.” 

“Deputy…”

She doesn’t look at him, just continues. “Now, I’m thinking about fighting off waves of cultists as they tried to murder my pregnant friend... And now I’m thinking about pushing my own bone back into my leg and limping 5 miles before I could get it set. And now I’m thinking about a woman shaking and crying and holding onto my legs because _your_ people had kept her with her hands tied and in a fucking cage for weeks.” 

“ _Alma_.” His voice is a little firmer.

“No!” She snaps, voice like a whip-crack through the kitchen. “You are going to listen to this, you are going to hear what happens under your command. People burned alive in your name, literal fucking atrocities that your followers believe are ordained by God. Talk about violent hearts...” 

“You are not going to shock me, Alma.” Joseph says. “You’re only upsetting yourself.”

“I’m not upset.” She says and hops down from the counter so she can step a little closer to him. “But why don’t you _care_ , Joseph, why don’t you care?”

“I do care.” He doesn’t avert his gaze. “I care about every one of you. I _love_ everyone within these walls.” 

“Causing pain isn’t love, Joseph.” She says, shaking her head. “But you’re not the only abuse victim to think it is.” 

“Don’t mock me.” 

“I’m not.” She says, and she’s being honest. They’re speaking quietly to one another and his intensity is making it hard or her to move. “I wouldn’t joke about the only thing that makes me feel sorry for you.” 

Joseph lets out a long breath through his nose. 

“I don’t need or want your pity,” he says, “but I appreciate that you care.”

Her nose flares and her throat feels dry; he would spin it that way.

“Don’t mistake me understanding your background as me _caring_ about you.” She says. “Because while I may not have a violent heart, I have a violent mind when I need it. Like the Cook - I put an arrow right through his left eye.” Alma points to her own. “And I felt fine about it.” 

She takes a couple more steps towards him, looking up at him. “And I’ll put one right through yours one day, and I’ll feel fine about it, and my heart won’t be changed at all.” 

After a pause, he says. “I think it will.” 

“No, my sympathy for you is up here,” she points to her temple, “born out of logic, of the fact that I know that it’s not fair for anybody to grow up the way you did. Here...” she points to her chest, “you have absolutely no place.” 

Joseph’s eyes run across her face, like he’s taking her in properly, scanning her.

“I believe I do.” 

Alma sighs and covers her face with her hands in frustration. There a a thousand things she wants to say in response to that, to scream about why and how he is wrong. But it seems so fruitless, so utterly pointless. He makes it so damn hard to think straight. 

“What are we talking about?” She puts some distance between them. “What is this fucking conversation?” 

“We’re speaking honestly, Alma, letting the truth flow from us.”

“To what end?” She can hear her voice raising slightly. “Jesus Christ, so I can go home and have nightmares about you for another week and lie to my friends about where I’ve been?” 

“Nightmares?” He says, his voice smaller than she’s heard it. Alma looks at him incredulously, because he has the audacity to look a bit hurt. She won’t go into the content of them, why the dreams were so frightening to her, she'll let him think he's some kind of monster to her, some kind of bogeyman. 

She decides to leave it alone altogether.

“Look, just - is this ever going to be solved? Are we ever going to be able to come to some kind of agreement where no more people die and you leave Hope County and its people alone?”

He looks her over again before answering, but his eyes linger just below her chin. Joseph is considering the question for longer than she thought he would; she finds herself holding her breath. It's the question she should have been asking all along, it's the only thing she should have said all along. 

“What’s that on your neck?” 

There is a long, long pause before Alma responds, because she is utterly bewildered, what on earth is he talking about? Did he even hear her question?

“I-”

She didn’t realise he was close enough to touch her, but he reaches out his hand and takes her chin, still quite gentle, and turns her face to the side, eyes on her throat. Eyes where Eli’s hickey still sits, purple and splotchy. What, the fuck?

The look on his face suggests he knows exactly what it is, and there is a moment of wide eyed shock before she smacks his hand away and steps back with her mouth half open. 

“Oh my fucking god,” she says, shaking her head, “that’s what is important to you right now?” 

“I wasn’t aware that you were attached.” He says, looking away from her then. Alma can barely catch her breath from the turn this conversation has taken. 

Her incredulity comes out in the form a bark of a laugh. 

“I’m not.” She says. “And even if I was, I have _no idea_ what that has to do with anything.”

Joseph looks disappointed, clasping his hands in front of him and looking thoroughly the pastor.

“Lust without love is a special affront to our Lord.” He shakes his head, and she sees his adam’s apple bob like he’s holding something back. “A truly terrible thing.” 

Alma cannot stand the patronisation in his tone, especially when she had been trying to talk about far more important things. So she turns, biting back.

“No, it was fucking great actually.” She says, enjoying the fact that it makes him look at her. “Truth be told it was exactly what I fucking needed.” 

Joseph’s jaw ticks, and his thumb worries the rosary beads wrapped around his hand. 

“Purely a one time situation, you know, but man, the memory of good dick lasts a long time. I’m surprised I can walk straight right now.” 

“Enough!” His temper breaks, and he approaches her so quickly that she finds herself almost stumbling over her feet as she steps back fast, until her back hits the counter and he’s standing over her. “I knew there were more sins inside you than my brother had time to pull out.” 

His breath ghosts her face, and he’s close enough that she can see the twitch in his eye and feel the emotion radiating off him. 

“Hmm,” she hums, smirking, emboldened by her building fury at his judgement, “I’d say every single sin in the book, but Lust really is the most fun to indulge, isn’t it?” 

Joseph’s hand finds her jaw, and he’s breathing heavily through his nose, tilting her up to face him. 

“Why do you insist on making this so difficult?” He squeezes a little bit, tattooed fingers pressing into her cheek. "When all I want to do is help you?"

She feels the urge to spit at him, but just grins bitterly. 

“Is this your preferred sin to indulge, Joseph?” Alma reaches down and squeezes his left forearm hard, where she knows is WRATH scar is. “So fucking transparent.” 

Alma can feel his heavy breaths and the heat of his body, she can smell the clean scent of his clothes and see the intense look in his bright blue eyes that she can’t fully decipher. There’s anger there though, overriding anything else. 

Looking at him, a strong urge rises to kiss him like she had in her dream, just to shut him up, just to see if she could ignite the very same lust in him and prove him a hypocrite. Her stomach flips at the impulse.

She raises up her hands and places them on his chest to shove him away bodily, sending him back and almost into the opposite counter before he has chance to recover. 

It’s only when he’s away from her that she realises she’s breathing heavily herself. 

“Touch me again and I’ll cave your fucking head in.” She manages to get out before she leaves the cabin quickly, in such a rush that she almost forgets her backpack and gun that sit by the door. 

Her mind buzzes as she runs from the cabin and she can hear her heartbeat in her ears. Somewhere in the confused run through the woods, she picks up her radio and asks to be picked up by the closest person with a vehicle. When she’s in the car, with a Resistance member she doesn’t know very well, he asks her if she’s alright, says she looks pale. She just nods and looks out of the window, the skin where Joseph had been holding her face feeling scorched. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real talk, would you prefer these chapters to be shorter? I don't know if you all would find them a little easier to consume that way and I know I have a tendency to go on and on. If you'll like them long they'll stay long but this chapter could easily have been two different ones.
> 
> Lmk if you liked this chapter, and don't panic about any love triangles, that isn't going to be happening, I just kind of liked the idea of Alma and Eli 'helping each other out' in that way and adding that layer to their friendship.


	3. Only You

Joseph’s dreams are rarely insignificant, and he’s dreamt of her since the moment she stepped through the doors of his church. He’d recognised from the outset that she would be important, it shone from her, that she was something unlike he had ever encountered before. Still, his visions have not told him exactly what it is about her he needs to understand, the image of her he holds in his head can still be blurry around the edges. 

She fights in his dreams as she does in reality, he tries to hold out his arms to her but rejects his embrace. God’s embrace.

The night after their last meeting, where he had lost his composure when he’d learned of her fornication with some man (unworthy and filthy, he must have been), he dreams of her very vividly. It was odd to go from imagining what her skin would feel like, to knowing, and he feels that the Lord is testing him in the way the memory of it stuck in his mind. Along with the memory of her smell, and the sound of her voice.

Testing him in some way he cannot yet divine.

But the vivid dream he’d had after that tense meeting is fraying the strength of his mind, making him beg for understanding as to why God would allow him such thoughts:

They were in the cabin, and they were holding onto each other in the kitchen in anger, until her anger had turned to something else and she had kissed him, she had kissed him so hard and passionate, and she had moaned into his mouth. 

That part of the dream might have been forgivable, but her putting her hand into his trousers, her laughing cruelly into his mouth and fondling his cock, her calling him a hypocrite when he hissed out a groan and took her breast in hand - that was not forgivable at all. 

Nor was laying her on the floor and pushing inside her, and putting his thumb into her mouth, nor was taking that wet thumb and drawing the cross on her forehead in her saliva as he fucked her. He did not make love to her, as God may have accepted, he _fucked_ her. 

Awaking, he aches, and goes straight to his bathroom to put himself under the cold shower. He will not give into this sin, he will not have to add a third carving of that _word_ into his skin because of her. Under the spray, he looks down at his cock, which is refusing to cooperate, incredibly hard, red at the tip, and groans aloud, closing his eyes and saying a prayer. Apologizing, begging for forgiveness. 

The cold not working, he turns the dial the other way until the water is scalding hot, hurting his skin. Perhaps he can sear the shame from him. Purge it. 

He hisses against the pain, grits his teeth. He can bear it, though, he can. Joseph is not the man he once was, that man _does not exist_ anymore. His hands make fists against the tile. 

Work distracts him from his thoughts of her, the conversations they’ve had that ring in his ears and the phantom sensation of her skin under his fingers. He gives his sermon at the pulpit and speaks from the heart as much as he can - but it feels a little rote. He’s distracted from his purpose and it needs to stop. God is quiet, but he is surely disappointed in him. 

John has been living at the Compound since the Deputy took his land… and spared his life, for some reason, so Joseph goes to his cabin to have lunch with his brother. They sit at the kitchen table together, and John pretends like he’s happy to be here and not missing the luxuries that he should know are material and unimportant. 

“You look distracted.” John says, and takes a sip of his tea.

Joseph takes a breath, and nods carefully. He hasn’t eaten much, he rarely does, the sandwich sits half eaten on his plate. “I am, rather.”

“Would you like to discuss it?” He asks. Joseph does like to speak to his brother when he can, though there are things he does not understand, and there are things that are easier to articulate to Jacob than to him. “Is it the Deputy?”

Joseph nods, and sips his water. Alma’s voice had been in his head all morning; he was remembering her righteous anger when she had told him all the terrible things she had seen here; how her eyes filled with tears and her hands shook with the wrath she was keeping inside. 

She feels _so much_ for people, she is so full of love and yet she hates Joseph and his family so entirely. Hates them and pities them. 

“She’s proving difficult to solve, isn’t she?” John says with an understanding nod. “When she came after me she was murderous, had me on the floor right next to my plane with a gun to my head... and let me go…”

John shakes his head, thinking about it. “I can’t understand why she showed me mercy when,” he casts his eyes down to the table, “when I showed her such cruelty.”

Joseph covers his brother’s hand with his own on the table; he looks very young when he’s filled with shame, like the little boy he had known.

“You were trying to help her, John, as we all have been trying to do.” He says, and he thinks of her smirking up at him and squeezing his arm, absolute venom in her eyes… beautiful lips curled into a snarl… “But she makes it very difficult.” 

“She said ‘yes’ _immediately_ .” John says, eyes almost identical to Joseph’s searching his. Their mother’s eyes. “Just trying to save her friend I think, but… If she hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t had failed you, Joseph, I might actually have been able to get her to atone, there are such _sins_ inside of her.” 

“I know.” Joseph says, comfortingly. “Don’t upset yourself, brother, we’ll have our chance again. Jacob will have her walk the path, Faith will open her mind... she will come to us.”

* * *

Now that so much of Jacob’s territory lies in the hands of the Resistance, it’s getting harder and harder to venture outside of the Outposts. The areas where Resistance presence is at its lowest in the Whitetail Mountains, Jacob’s people are getting more aggressive in protecting what they have left. They’ve lost a lot of people in the last few weeks, and it sits heavy in Alma’s heart, a lead weight. 

The other day, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and really _looked_ for a change, like she never does anymore. Her hair is blonder than it was, bleached by the sun, and down to her shoulders where it used to sit in a neat bob; it’s always in knots too, and it feels like straw to the touch. The dark circles under her eyes never seem to go away, she’s at once pale and sunburned in spots, her face is slimmer, her lips are still full, but chapped. 

She had washed her face, put on some lip balm, moisturised the dryness from her nose, but it was halfhearted, and had just made her feel sad that taking care of her appearance wasn’t something that brought her joy anymore like it had been. 

In her downtime, without expensive skincare, she’s found herself reading the files they have on the Seed brothers that she’s had in her backpack since before they first arrived here. It’s as if reading the words again and again about their pasts will help her stop them before this is all too late. Jacob’s file is mostly military records, papers about PTSD making him unfit for service, his violent arrests. Him setting fire to their parents’ farm as a juvenile makes more sense now that she knows for a fact they were abusive. She really doesn’t think Joseph was lying about that. 

John’s file is pretty light: his education, his adoption into a wealthy family after the brothers were separated, the accolades he had received as a lawyer, the deeds showing that it had been his money that had bought the first land the cult owned. Alma wonders if she could measure the amount of good that could have been done with money like that.

Of course, Joseph’s file is the thickest, and she feels as if she knows it like the back of her hand. Before the cult had become what it is now, it had been like any other extreme religious group, with its own literature and videos, and its materials for sale online. His past seems like an open book; he talked about it to lure people in back then as often as he’s willing to talk about it directly to her now.

But she’s found discrepancies in his accounts of his life and what other proof says. Some small, basic self-mythologisation; some disturbing and upsetting retellings, things she doesn’t understand the reason for lying about. 

She chews her thumb as she looks over the printout of the portrait of Joseph the cult uses. How can this man deny he has a huge ego? Making an Idol of himself. Alma realises that her eyes are straining, and it’s because it has gotten dark around her in the little office she’s set-up in the upstairs of Fort Drubman. The cult don’t know about this place, and Hurk Sr. likes her enough to let her stay there when she needs to. Perhaps she’ll watch that recruitment video again, the disc is around somewhere… 

A hammering on the door breaks her concentration.

“Dep, everyone’s waiting for you, come on.” It’s Grace, sounding impatient. Honestly, Alma had forgotten about the little shindig going on downstairs for Hurk Jr’s birthday. She sighs and drops the file on top of the pile of papers.

“Coming.” She says and runs a hand through her hair, tugging her t-shirt straight. 

It’s like she’s opened some kind of floodgate into looking at herself, she checks her reflection in the dark window and touches her stomach; she never thought she would, but she kind of misses her little belly. It’s still there, but it’s shrinking, now she eats less and moves always. 

“Stupid.” She murmurs to herself, leaving the bedroom, and clicking her tongue for Boomer, who had been napping under the desk, to follow. 

Nearly all of her closest allies wait downstairs, filling the kitchen, munching on snacks and drinking beers. Kim complains that Nick’s only letting her have soda, hand on her big belly as Sharky cuts into the pizza they’ve homemade since ordering was not an option. The cult is really missing a trick not opening their own version of Dominos. 

“Finally!” Hurk says, sitting at the head of the table with a pointy little party hat on over the top of his bandana. “Where’s my gift?” 

“Close your eyes.” Grace squeezes through the busy kitchen to go to the front door. 

“Don’t fuckin’ peak.” Nick smacks his back when Hurk opens and eye and the big man whines and squeezes his eyes shut, making Alma chuckle from where she watches, leaning on the fridge beside Jess, who is sitting up on the counter. 

Sharky helps Grace lug in the huge, spray painted bazooka, a big pink bow around it and sets it on the table with a loud clunk.

“Okay, open!” Sharky says, and everyone cheers when Hurk sees his gift. 

“You guys!” He looks over it and stands to pick it up onto his shoulder “Shit, this is so fuckin’ cool.”

“Just don’t blow us all up before we’re drunk, okay?” Jess says, handing Alma a chocolate cupcake that she stuffs in her mouth whole. Fuck, sometimes she doesn’t realise how hungry she is until she finally gets to eat. 

“I won’t.” Hurk says, swinging the thing around the room and making everyone pretty nervous. “Boss, can we go blow some shit up right now?” 

“What about the party?” Alma asks, mouth full of cupcake and icing. It’s a little amusing, if strange, how they sometimes ask her permission to do stuff when she’s made it so clear they don’t have to. 

“This _is_ the party, man.” Sharky says, already halfway out the door. “C’mon let’s go to the scrapyard and fuck up some trucks!” 

“Woo!” Nick follows, Grace and Kim roll their eyes at each other, but do the same, trailing out of the door. Outside, she hears Hurk Sr. complain about how childish they all are and they’re all screwed if this is what the resistance has to offer. Alma laughs at that. 

Alma finds herself lagging behind, enjoying herself but finding it hard to be in the party mood these days. It’s one of the things she likes the most about all of them - never losing their personalities and humour in the face of such strangeness. 

“You coming, Dep?” Jess asks, holding the door open as they step onto the porch. 

“Yeah, I’ll catch up with you.” Alma says, forcing a smile like she does a lot these days. “Gonna have a cigarette while it’s quiet.”

“Well, just follow the noise.” Jess says, before disappearing into the dark like she does. 

Alma walks to the end of the porch and takes the pack of cigarettes from the back of her jeans. It’s not something she does a lot, needing her lungs to be in good working order, but it’s a nice treat on chilly nights like this. She leans her elbows on the barrier and looks up at the sky. When it’s a clear night, it’s wonderfully starry out here, reminding her that there _is_ a world outside of all of this. 

She can hear the cheers and whoops of her friends at a distance, and smiles to herself, lighting the cigarette between her lips and taking a long breath. It gives her a little flash of memory of herself before, standing outside the bar in a little dress and trying to catch someone’s eye.

This needs to end soon. Those memories are fading too fast. 

Out of nowhere, she hears a sharp puff of air and a stinging pain blooms through her arm. Confused, she frowns and looks down at it, realising what it is as soon as she sets eyes on the green blowdart stuck into her skin. 

“Fuck.” She hisses, and panic rises up in her throat as she yanks it out. She whips her head around to see where it came from, squinting at the dark treeline, but her body moves slow, so, so slow, and when she blinks the stars float into her view.

Bliss, fucking Bliss, flooding her body, killing her will to fight and feeling so, delightfully good. She tries to call out, she wishes to god someone would realise they’d forgotten something and come back to the house, but it’s not happening, she’s alone.

It feels like she’s walking in molasses as she tries to run across the porch, Hurk Sr. must still be around, Boomer is still in the house - her voice doesn’t work when she tries to call them. 

When she doesn’t go down, apparently, her attackers decide to expedite the process, and a blinding pain goes through her when an arrow strikes clean through her thigh.

She hears herself scream and fall to the ground, and passes out from the agony of the shot and the pleasure of the Bliss. 

* * *

Alma wakes incredibly groggy, flat on her back and cold to the bone. Above her all she can see is metal, and she turns her head. It’s dark, and the fiery barrel outside illuminates that she is in a cage and lying on a filthy old bedroll. She feels the urge to fight the hand she feels on her back, sitting her up, but she doesn’t have the strength. 

She blinks, vision bleary, and the fellow captive sitting her up brings a cup of water to her lips and makes her sip. It’s welcome, and she finds herself clinging to his arm for fear she’ll end up falling right back down again. Alma tries to thank him, throat dry, and he nods. He looks terrified. 

Her instinct is to say something comforting to him, but dread fills her. She knows exactly where she is, in one of Jacob’s cages, and the second he gets out that fucking music box she’s going to end up killing this kind man who gave her water. 

“They want you to be strong, one of you will be strong.” A manic voice says from outside the cage, holding onto the bars.

“Staci?” Alma chokes out, crawling forward and trying to get to her feet. It is him, Staci Pratt, the person she keeps failing to save. “Staci, what’s wrong with you?”

Stars still swim in her vision, the Bliss in her blood. 

Her voice is starting to come back, but she still feels like she can barely move. Looking down at where she’s feeling the most pain, she sees the bloody bandage wrapped around her thigh and remembers the shot from the arrow. 

When she looks back up at Staci, there’s something off in his face, a look in his eyes like he’s not really there.

“ _Staci_.” She puts her hand up on the bars and sits herself up more. “Look at me, what has he-”

Alma hadn’t noticed Jacob approaching until his hand is on Staci’s shoulder and he nudges him away.

“Get out of here, peaches.” He dismisses gruffly, and it’s then that Alma sees Jacob is not alone, Joseph is there too, in his black vest and white shirt. Ridiculously, there’s the feeling in her stomach that he’s here to save her, her heart races in hope and humiliation that he’s seeing her so weak.

She watches Joseph and Jacob touch foreheads in that way the brothers do, and like she and Joseph did once. 

A feeling of deep unease floods her. Facing the Seed’s while she is so powerless is not a good feeling; the last two times she and Joseph have seen each other, it’s been even, with agreed terms. This is not that. 

Joseph approaches, looking directly at her, and kneels down so they are face to face, his hands find the bars just below hers, his rosary beads clacking on the metal. Blue eyes scan her, and she sees the pity in his eyes.

“I know you’re in pain,” he says, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, hm? But you are not the only one to be tested… Do you know that I had a wife?” Joseph outstretches his right arm and shows Alma the tattoo of her on his forearm.

She does know; she knows a lot of things about him. Is he moving slow or is it her? Why does her tongue feel so heavy?

“So beautiful, isn’t she?” He says. “Like you.” 

Alma’s heart races and her stomach feels odd - he’s never said anything like that to her before, even acknowledged that he pays attention to what she looks like. She looks away from him, comparing her to his dead wife certainly doesn’t sit right. 

“I’m sorry you lost her.” She says, voice foreign to her, far away. 

Joseph’s eyes find hers, surprised and full of emotion. 

“You know about her?” He asks, voice quiet, intense.

“I know a lot about you.” She says, leaning forward and resting her forehead on the bar, utterly exhausted. “I research.” 

“Do you know that she was pregnant with our first child when she died?” He asks, scooting forward on his knees. “We were just babies ourselves, really, and I was terrified.” Joseph laughs ruefully, thinking about it. 

Alma does know, she’s seen the documents. She’s seen the truth, and she’s seen the lie that he tells about it. She wonders which version she’s going to get now. 

“I was terrified of becoming a father... Mostly about money. She wasn’t worried. She had faith that things were going to work out. She always had faith.” He leans forward even more, eyes locked with her, voice low and sad.

“She didn’t try to fight fate like you do, didn’t try to force God’s will to bend to her wants...” 

Alma would really like him to stop doing that, comparing her to this woman. She has no will to argue. 

“One day, she was going to visit a friend, there was an accident.” He looks through her, like he can see it happening. Alma has read this story before in one of his books. “And the Lord taketh.” 

She wants to touch his hand where it rests above hers and say something comforting to him. His life has been truly terrible. 

“And they brought me to the hospital, and put me in a room with this little bundle stuffed with tubes…” 

Alma feels sick, she’s getting the lie. She lets out a long breath and reaches up her fingers to cover his tattooed ones. Her mind isn’t working at its full function, she can barely control her impulses. 

Why is he lying to her?

“No, no…” She shakes her head. Joseph’s intensity doesn’t fade, but he looks confused, his eyes flit to where she’s touching him. “‘And they told you to be strong because your baby was going to live’.” Alma quotes. 

Joseph is struck quiet that she’s finishing his story for him; Alma doesn’t know if Jacob has looked down at this conversation and is wondering why she’s speaking to Joseph like this. Alma can’t concentrate on anything else, entirely locked in on Joseph and still feeling so incredibly out of her mind. 

“You wrote this down in your book, don’t you remember?” She feels that she’s been slipping down and tugs herself up again, leg aching. “But it’s not true, Joseph-”

“Stop…” Joseph closes his eyes, not moving.

“No, no, no…” Alma doesn’t want to pass out again, she feels she could cry. “Your baby died in the car crash Joseph, you had no control over it. I’m sorry.” 

“You’re wrong.” He fixes her with a deep stare, like it’s going to make her shut up. She couldn’t shut up if she wanted to. 

“It’s in the police records. She died on impact. I’m so sorry, Joseph… There was no test from God, he just took them from you, both, your unborn baby and your wife...” Tears break and she isn’t sure why. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t do this terrible thing?”

It was one of the first things she had been told in the briefing, that he tends to rewrite elements of his adult life, that he needs to keep the pretense that he had more control over it than he ever did. 

His eyes absolutely burn into hers, and she sniffles as she looks at him. She does pity him, she really does. Joseph stands up suddenly, making her jump when he tears his hand away from hers, and faces his brother, sending him only a curt nod before walking away, moving more quickly than she has ever seen him move. “Wait, wait, no!” She reaches her hand through the bars, stretching it out. “Don’t let him do this to me!” 

Joseph doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t turn his head to face her. She sees Jacob reach into his pocket and pull out that little wooden music box. 

“Fuck, fuck, please!” Feebly, the swipes her hand out at him, but he’s standing too far away for her to reach; her nails just scrape his boot. He opens the box, she hears the song and her own cries as the pain tears through her head and she sees nothing but red. 

* * *

Joseph’s heart thunders all the way back to his compound, he sits in the back of the car, jaw clenched, looking out of the window. The driver doesn’t speak to him, and Joseph doesn’t think he could speak even if he wanted to.

His people try to greet him when he returns, reaching out for him like the always do, looking to him for _something_. But he brushes them off. Making a beeline to his church, above which his room sits. As soon as the door slams behind him he feels himself almost stumbling through the pews. 

_‘She’s wrong, she’s lying, she’s a liar, snake tongue…’_

He passes the pulpit and opens the door at the back of the room, stomping up the stairs, head swimming like it does before his visions. It doesn’t feel like one’s coming though and he hasn’t been praying for it. God rarely just delivers him his word out of nowhere.

Slamming his door shut, he falls to his knees by his bed and whips off his glasses before clasping his hands together, eyes closed.

His body is shaking, head to toe, he hurts his own hands with the fervour of his grip. Silently, he begs the Lord to help him, help him with what, he isn’t sure. Give him the answer, perhaps, give him the affirmation that what he remembers about his daughter had been true. 

He can remember it. He can remember how she had felt in his arms, he can remember the hiss of the machine and the smell of her head, the tube between his fingers. 

The thing that had taken him the longest time to find absolution for, the thing that had proved his willingness to sacrifice for God and for this world. 

A ringing goes through his ears, and his thoughts lose their coherency; he buries his face into the blankets and grips them in his hands. 

_Flashing red and blue lights, stumbling off the couch, drunk, opening the door to see the female police officer looking at him with sad eyes, asking him if they can come in. Something terrible has happened. I’m sorry sir, she didn’t make it, they didn’t make it, she didn’t make it,_ **_they_ ** _didn’t make it._

_He hears himself shout, he feels the pain in his knees when he falls to them. No, no, no, no, no. God, why are you doing this to me? Why did I never get to hold my child?_

Joseph shouts out loud and gets to his feet, crossing to the other side of the room where his desk is; covered in papers, ink, a typewriter. He shuffles through them like he’s going to find some answer in his writings. He looks across the wall at the words there, the pictures, and his eyes focus on one. 

The wanted poster for her, the Deputy, Alma.

He puts his hand on it, traces her face with his finger; her upturned nose, her sunglasses covered eyes, her full lips… 

A liar, a sinner. Just like he told his people, just like he knows she is. 

_Such goodness in her though, blonde and pink and angelic and beautiful._

His fist closes on the picture and he looks away from it, turning his back on her. 

It hurts when he thinks of her just then, crying and touching his hand, looking like she genuinely feels _anything_ for him. It hurts to remember how she had reached and called for him when he walked away, like she wanted his salvation. The image of her tear stained face fills his head, and immense guilt settles in his chest. 

This is what sinners want: to trick the righteous into forgetting the sins that they have done, to distract with their beauty and their perfumed words. With his hands on his desk, he bows his head and tries his best to collect himself, though his mind races; there is goodness in Alma, but she would certainly lie to try and discredit his teachings. Lying, killing, _fornicating_... she’s capable of much sin. 

Joseph raises his eyes to her image again.

“You are wrong.” He says, though his voice is weak. 

* * *

Alma smells rot before she opens her eyes. Every part of her body hurts, every muscle feels like it’s been stretched to his limit. She desperately doesn’t want to open her eyes and see what has happened around her, but the smell threatens to make her vomit and she sits herself up and blinks against the brightness.

Bodies, a ring of them around her, riddled with bullet holes and stab wounds, flies hovering around them, dead for hours. She hears herself whimper and she looks down to find her hands covered in dried blood that has grafted under her nails. Her forearms are cut and bruised. 

She doesn’t try to get to her feet initially, she just crawls across the mud, desperate to get away from the bodies, the bodies of people she’s murdered. Including the frightened man that had given her water.

The memory is blurry, it feels like a dream, but she can remember how much she had just wanted to please Jacob when she was running around taking out the targets, killing the weak, culling the herd. THE WORLD IS WEAK.

He had said _‘well done’_ and she had felt a thrill, he had said, _‘excellent_ ,’ and she had been pushed to keep going. 

Before she knows it, she’s running, her path uneven, her body entirely weakened and the wound on her thigh hurting terribly. She’s crying as well, properly crying out into the empty field; the tears pour down her dirty cheeks and streak her face and she doesn’t even know where she’s going. 

Feeling like a lost child, the pain in her body making her dizzy, she presses the button on her radio, tuned into the frequency she and her closest allies use. 

“I - I need help - I’m-” Alma falls to the ground again, a sob racking her body. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to - I -”

“Boss?”

“Dep?”

“Where are you, man?”

“I-” She looks around. She’s still in the mountains, but can say no more than that. “I don’t…”

Alma passes out in the middle of that field, forward onto her face. ‘Only You’ still echoes around her head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I think my pace will probably slow down a little bit now as I continue to flesh out where this is going, but I'll be back soon with another chapter.


	4. Whose Love Is Unending

Hours pass, days pass as Alma drifts in and out of consciousness, sometimes hearing muffled conversation around her, eyes blinking open when someone sits her up to pour water into her mouth. Her dreams are a red haze, and that song echoes round her head until she feels like she will go insane. She feels a hand on her forehead, and imagines that it is her mother’s, she feels her clothes being changed, and feels like a helpless child. 

When she finally fully awakes, her mouth is incredibly dry and tastes horrible, and she feels a dull ache in her body. She rubs her eyes and sits up on her elbows, bleary eyes looking around the bedroom she doesn’t recognise. She half expects to see a frayed Bikini Kill poster and hear an annoyed voice telling her she's late for school. 

“Oh, thank Christ…” The voice surprises her, and she looks over to see Kim sitting in a chair by the bed, face pale and concerned. “Are you back?” 

Alma groans and pulls herself up so she’s fully seated. She’s in the Rye house, she can tell now. 

“I think so…” She sits back against the headboard, weak. “Fuck don’t get too close to me, my breath smells like I fucking toilet.” 

Kim laughs and shakes her head, fishing around in her pocket. “Well, you sound like yourself.” She hands Alma a pack of chewing gum, and she quickly puts one in her mouth, enjoying the sharp freshness. “Was me who got you changed, not Nick, so don’t panic, but I was scared of you biting my fingers off if I tried to brush your teeth.”

With a tired chuckle, Alma stretches to the bedside table with a groan and picks up the water bottle sitting there, holding the gum between her cheek and teeth and taking a long drink around it. Even lukewarm, it’s the most refreshing drink of water she’s ever had. Thankfully, her vision is normal and her motor functions are back. 

“How did I get here?” She asks, setting it back down. 

“Well we all heard your distress call on the radio, thankfully Dutch managed to trace your radio frequency. I’ve never seen Grace so freaked out as when we found you in that field, you looked…” Kim doesn’t seem to want to finish her sentence, stroking her pregnant belly absentmindedly. 

“Dead?” Alma says; she’d _thought_ she might die, right in a field in rural Montana. Kim just nods, looking sad at the thought. It’s been a long time since she’s had people who would be sad if she died. She reaches over and rests her hand on Kim’s knee. “I’m not though, am I? Un-fucking-killable.”

“I’m beginning to think so.” 

“How long was I out?” She asks. 

“Fourth day now.” Kim says, and Alma swears, shaking her head. Fucking Jacob. 

There is a long pause in which Alma tries to remember exactly what had happened in that red blur. Nothing comes back, it’s all so unclear. All she knows is that she wants a shower and a soda. 

“What… happened?” Kim asks, delicately, and Alma looks down at her hands in her lap. They’ve been cleaned up, but there’s still some dry blood under her fingernails. That poor man who helped her sit up and gave her water, even though he was terrified and in a cage himself, she’d killed him. She’d killed so many innocent people because of a _fucking music box._

“I don’t want to talk about it, Kim.” Alma shakes her head, feeling a lump in her throat that she tries to swallow.

“Okay.” Kim nods, not pushing it. “You want some lasagne? Nick’s a better cook than you would think.” 

Alma laughs a little bit, letting out a shaky breath. She is incredibly hungry, actually. “And a Pepsi?” 

Kim nods and leaves her with a smile and a tap on the hand. When she leaves, Alma shuffles herself out of bed with difficulty. Her thigh stings, and she looks down at the fresh bandage around it. With a bracing breath, she unravels it; thank Christ the wound underneath seems to have closed up, bruised, yellow and nasty as it still looks. 

She stands and stretches out all her limbs, before walking to the bathroom on unsteady feet, feeling a little like a baby deer. Alma strips off the oversized sweats Kim has put her in and feeling embarrassed at how bad she smells, dropping the clothes in the hamper. As soon as she is under the hot spray, she moans aloud; it feels so good to have the water run down her spine, softening her sore muscles. 

Making a mental note that she will owe the Rye’s a bottle of shower gel, she lathers up copiously, covering herself in it head to toe, under her arms, between her legs, in her hair. She scrubs her nails too hard with the little brush until she’s sure the dried blood is totally gone, and tries not to cry. There’s no time to cry as long as Jacob is out there, just waiting to stick another arrow in her. He would laugh at her if he knew he'd made her cry. 

And fucking Joseph, he’d just walked away from her, he knew what Jacob was going to do to her and he turned his back. All that bullshit about caring about her, thinking she had a good heart, making her feel _sorry_ for him and his shitty childhood. She wants to punch through the tile. Why is she surprised? He turns his back on people getting tortured _every day._

She could stay in the shower for hours, but she doesn’t want to use all the hot water, so she rinses and turns the handle, stepping out and wrapping herself in a fluffy towel.

Back in the bedroom, Kim has left her a plate of lasagne, painkillers, fresh clothes and a condensation-covered can of Pepsi. Her stomach rumbles at the smell. 

The pills are taken and soda is chugged in no time, and she’s still in her towel when she devours the food, sitting on the floor by the bed. It is really good, she can’t believe it’s a skill that Nick has. 

Being clean, fed and hydrated makes her feel so much better and although she aches still, she feels like she can move properly again. Downstairs, Nick hands her a big bottle of water to drink and tells her it’s good to see her back on her feet. Boomer, who Kim had been keeping at bay, runs to her and jumps up on her, licking her face while she scratches his belly. It's good to see him. When she says she needs to move along and get back to work, they both argue, though they know it won’t work. 

She agrees to let them both look over her injuries one more time before they’ll let her go, and soon she’s packing up her backpack and loading her shotgun. 

“Thank you guys.” Alma hugs them both. “I owe you big.” 

“You don’t owe us a damn thing.” Nick insists, walking her out with a hand on her shoulder. “You call me as soon as you need eyes in the sky.”

“I will.” She says, and hitches her backpack up onto her shoulders before stepping off their porch and heading to the truck that’s been brought for her. Her body desperately does not want her to get going already, but she hasn’t got a choice, she can’t stop the momentum now. She clicks her tongue for Boomer to get in the backseat, which he does, diligently. 

Once she sets off, waving goodbye to the Rye’s, she rolls down her window and enjoys the fresh air as she drives. She’s heading back to the Whitetail’s, because Jacob Seed is going to die for what he’s done and she is not letting him scare her into retreating. They keep trying to prove to them that she’s the monster they think she is, all three of them just _daring_ her to be at her absolute worst. Fuck them, fuck all of them. 

It’s only a couple of miles down the road that her radio clicks from its place on the passenger seat and Sharky’s voice comes through.

“Hey bro, Nick and Kim told me you’re back on your feet.”

One handedly, she picks it up and presses the button to speak.

“Yeah, I’m feeling a lot better.” She says. In the distance, she can see an upcoming roadblock so turns off onto a dirt path in the woods. Hurk isn’t with her right now to just blast through the thing, and she’s not ready for a big fire fight just yet.

“Thank fuckin’ god,” Sharky says, “shit I was more worried than when I thought I caught crabs off that girl from the - uh, besides the point, listen… that truck got sent from an outpost I was at so I put a little treat for ya in the glovebox.” 

Frowning in intrigue, Alma reaches to the passenger seat and pops the glovebox open. She sees it immediately, the generous baggie of weed stashed in there.

“Sharky, will you marry me? She sighs. 

“Hey, what are friends for if it ain’t to get you blazed as fuck? There’s a couple of pre-rolls in there too.” 

“Thank you, man.” She says. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Sure boss, Sharky out.” 

Alma can’t resist, she needs to relax a little and she knows Sharky wouldn’t give her anything crazy strong. She lights up one of the joints between her lips and inhales leisurely, blowing it out of the window. It feels good, nicely begins to alleviate the pain in her limbs, and she doesn’t feel quite as murderous as she makes it over the bridge between John and Jacob’s territories. 

“Sorry about the smell, boy.” She says to Boomer, who cocks his head inquisitively. 

She drives quietly for a while; in the back of her mind, she knows she daren’t turn on the radio on the off-chance _that_ song begins to play. He’s been conditioning her, and she has no idea how far that conditioning goes. 

Maybe she has been a little distracted though, because down the road a way she sees a Peggie checkpoint coming up. There’s only one cultist standing there, partially in the road, and though he won’t be able to see her through her tinted windows yet, he’ll know it’s her immediately when she passes.

She could floor it and speed by, but he’ll radio in reinforcements, describe her truck and make sure everyone in miles is looking for her. For a moment, Alma wonders what this one has done, she wonders how much pain he has caused in the name of the Project; as if reminding her, the wound on her thigh stings at it heals. That’s how she manages to feel nothing as she veers to the right and puts her foot on the gas, only allowing him to turn his head in surprise before she hits him square, the car jolting like running over a speed-bump when he goes under the wheels.

Looking in the rearview to see the blood and mess smeared on the floor isn’t necessary. He won’t be bothering her, and screw him anyway.

She heads for the Wolf’s Den, it’s worth regrouping with Eli and the militia before she makes her next move. Her joint still burns happily between her lips, and she enjoys the pretty scenery and wilfully shuts off the danger she’s in just for being here.

When her radio clicks again, she waits for a familiar voice, but is met with only the fuzz from the feedback on the other end.

Alma knows who it is.

Immediately, she picks it up and brings it to her lips, steering one handed, before speaking into it.

“Hello, Father.” She says, tone laced with every bit of bitterness she feels. 

There is a long pause that is typical of him.

“Alma.” Joseph says, betraying nothing in his tone.

“You can call me Deputy,” she says, “or Sinner or Dirty Wrathful Fornicating Whore, if you like. Not Alma, though.” 

She hears his deep, disappointed sigh, and wishes he were here so she could push him out of the moving car.

“Did my brother hurt you?” He asks, like he _cares_.

“Yes.” She says simply, and takes a long drag on her joint. “Just woke up after 4 days, actually.” 

Another long breath, she can almost see him shaking his head. 

“Jacob sometimes does go too far, but you must understand that he is only trying to-”

“Listen, I’m not really in the mood to listen to your bullshit right now, to be honest. Whatever reasoning you’ve come up with as to why what he made me do is for my own good, I’m not going to be convinced, because I’m not fucking crazy.” She turns off the road and onto a dirt path. 

The combination of painkillers, weed, and incredible anger have completely destroyed any inhibitions she may have had. She doesn’t know why she should bother talking to him with any kind of respect, they aren't going to be coming to any kind of agreement. 

“Alma,” he says, apparently ignoring that she told him not to do that, “I believe we've regressed, I think we should speak face to face again.” 

At that, Alma laughs out loud. “Sure, and while we’re at it why don’t I give you a million dollars and a blowjob?” She mocks.

Joseph, as she expected, doesn’t laugh. He goes very quiet on the other end that she would think he had hung up if it weren’t for the hiss of feedback on the other end. 

“I think that we still have the potential to understand each other.” He says, ignoring her comment. 

Alma’s hand tightens on the steering wheel and she throws the last stub of her blunt out of the window. 

“You know, I thought we had the potential to understand each other too, on _some_ level. But the minute I challenged your lies, your _psychosis_ , in front of someone, you ran away and left me to be tortured.” She spits. “So fuck you and your fucking understanding.” 

“Depu-”

“I’ll see you when I bring you your brother’s head on a spike.” She turns off her radio fully and dumps it on the passenger seat.

* * *

Joseph stays kneeling on the ground for a long time with the radio at his knees, her rage burning him like the words of others rarely manage to do anymore. He has seen her anger before, but she is particularly angry with _him_ , she is disappointed in him. Alma thinks him a coward, she believes that he is running away from the truth; it makes his stomach turn to have her hate him. He shouldn’t care, _he shouldn’t care,_ but he does. 

Her last comment had stung like he’s sure she intended it to. Joseph has known for a long time that God meant Jacob to be a sacrifice, and he has known that Alma will be the one to kill him in the end. But he had hoped that she would not relish it, that she would not take pleasure in Jacob’s death.

 _‘Fuck you and your fucking understanding’_ rings around his head, the venom that she had said it with. He wonders if what she says is right, that they really will not see each other again other than to cause each other terrible pain. Perhaps they will never find understanding with each other, perhaps they were never meant to.

God is silent, and even in the past all he had told Joseph of Alma had been whispers, vague and mysterious. 

He tries to meditate, pacing his room and praying that God will offer him answers as to why thoughts of Alma have begun to consume him so entirely. Is the Lord disappointed that he has failed to save her? Does he think that he is not trying hard enough? Or is there a higher purpose to Alma that he does not yet understand?

Whatever the answer, Joseph feels as if he walks around in pain. Sleeping and waking, he thinks of her. His sermons will start to suffer if he does not get ahold of his self-control soon, his people will start to notice that their Father is not committing himself entirely to the Project, as he asks _them_ to do.

His knees click when he finally stands, and he tucks the radio under his bed before dressing for the day. 

Joseph’s position commands much from him, he has always known this; it is important now more than ever that he keeps his mind. The only unmysterious thing about Alma is that she is a terrible distraction. 

So, in his black suit and with his collar on, he leaves his room goes down the stairs to the main chapel where his congregation are waiting, sitting in the pews. The guards mostly keep their expressions schooled, but the others, those who are here to work in other ways than physical fighting, look at him with wide-eyed awe, sitting forward in their seats and waiting for his word. 

_‘It’s also about you. You like it, don’t you? When their eyes are wide and they almost weep in awe of you? You like it. You like it.’_

Her poison words, infecting him even here.

“My children,” he walks to the pulpit and places a hand over his book, “you have all sacrificed much to be here at Eden’s Gate, to be by my side, but I would ask you all to close your eyes and remember why it is we make our sacrifices. The people that have turned their backs on us, those that fight against us, will find no place in the arms of the Lord when the world is consumed with righteous fire and flame.” 

He steps away from the pulpit and walks slowly around it, regarding all their faces, eyes closed as he instructed. 

“But you, for your loyalty, your piety, your godliness, your _commitment_ to do what is difficult for the good of mankind… You will find a home in Heaven. You will feel God’s embrace. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…’” Joseph approaches a parishioner that sits in the front row, an older woman, tears on her cheeks and clothes filthy. He places his hand on the top of her head and hears her sigh shakily. 

“We do not do what we do for reward. We do not do what we do for riches, or for fame.” Joseph walks the pews, laying his hands gently on the people who feel relief from his touch. “We do it for the forgiveness of our Lord, we answer only to him in the hope that he will take us into his arms in the end.” 

Crying comes from somewhere in the room, a normal occurrence when he speaks. When he commands them to open their eyes again, and they all look up at him from where he stands at the front of the room, Joseph feels a strange turn in his stomach. Nausea comes over him in waves. 

The memory of Alma’s voice comes to him again. _‘Anyone who eats your ridiculous, messy, nonsensical bullshit and swallows it is a fool.’_

“I-” Joseph stammers, which he is quite sure has never happened to him when he has been preaching before, so he closes his eyes and spreads his palms to the sides, “praise the heavens for giving us our brother John, who hears our confessions…”

He begins the prayer that they all know, and they speak it aloud with him.

“Our sister Faith, who soothes us, our brother Jacob, who protects us, and our Father Joseph, whose love is unending.”

Joseph needs to walk, he has been shut up in the compound for too long and needs to remember the world outside of it. Once his sermon is finished, he dismisses guards, assuring them that he will be protected, and walks behind the church and down to the shoreline of the lake. It is beautiful, this world, despite its evils. He can see why Alma is so desperate to keep hold of it as it is. He walks for a while, until his church is out of sight and he feels that he is truly alone.

Walking in the loose dirt by the water’s edge, he takes a good lungful of fresh air and looks over at the sun glittering on the water. He feels shaken, and for the first time in a long time, he thinks of himself _before_ , as he had been just after losing his wife and baby. Hair loose and bedraggled, skinny, walking the streets and sleeping in his car. Drunk or high, always. 

Sleeping with women whose names he did not know, not caring to know.

It had been so wrong, how he had behaved, but he cannot deny the freedom of it either, the freedom in being entirely lost. 

Alma had surely been lost before she came here, and though he wishes he could steer her towards salvation, he understands the pleasure of sin and how hard it is to tear oneself away. Perhaps he should be more patient, because she is younger than him and she is still lost, still fighting stay that way. He can only imagine what kind of temptations have come her way in her life, looking the way she does, having that intelligence and that humour and mystique. 

Joseph wonders, for a moment, what it would have been like if he had met Alma back then, in a bar in the middle of nowhere. Did she wear dresses? Skirts? Would she had laughed at his jokes? Did she wear red lipstick? He remembers, with surprise because the memory had long since been banished, what those bars had smelled like and sounded like. He also remembers red lipstick marking his skin and perfume permeating his clothes. 

LUST

How often Alma found herself in that kind of place he has no idea, but he can picture her there. Standing at the counter, throwing her head back in a laugh, beautiful and clean and without a single worry. Unable to stop his racing mind, he imagines himself, back then, approaching her, he imagines her raising her eyebrow at him and smiling coyly. She's probably good at that. He had been a mess of a man back then, but perhaps she would have been intrigued by that, or just feeling particularly excited that night. 

Would she have come to his car with him and climbed in his lap? Would she have kissed him and bitten his bottom lip? He sees it, eyes closed, her unfastening his jeans, hitching up her skirt and lowering herself onto his cock, moaning and gripping his shoulders, mouth falling open and eyes fluttering shut… He is sure her throat tastes beautiful. 

Joseph stops in his tracks and opens his eyes, making a noise of frustration with himself. He had come here for peace, not to indulge this wicked feeling. 

“God, forgive me.” He murmurs to himself, and removes his glasses, putting them in his jacket pocket. “I don’t know why her presence has me thinking about these things… I don’t understand the _meaning_. I have put that part of myself in the past; that man no longer exists, I have purged him from existence.” 

He gets no answer, as seems to be the norm of late, and he wishes it didn’t make him so angry. Joseph knows it is not righteous to be resentful of the Lord for not just giving him answers, as if it has become his right to receive them. 

Joseph considers that he is receiving no answers because there are no answers to be found. He might be _wrong._ Perhaps, though he knows that she is fated to be the one to kill his family and open the seals, there is nothing more to her than that. Perhaps he is mistaking his overwhelming lust as something more than it is. It is possible that the two of them have no great purpose together, and that she is _right_ to hate him and he is wrong to try to change that. 

Looking to the sky, he watches two birds fly across the blue together, circling, swooping in tandem. A sign, maybe. Alma would think it was nothing at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, doesn't sound like Alma is going to be convinced to have another friendly cup of coffee any time soon...


	5. Talking at Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexual content ahead, Joseph's a little frustrated.

It happens on a couple of occasions before she finally grows frustrated: during the night, her radio will click, telling her someone is on the other end, and she will hear nothing but static and the occasional breath. She _knows_ who it is, and though her rage subsides over the weeks as her injuries heal and her mind clears, she has no interest in speaking to him. 

That is until the fifth time it happens, when she is sleeping at an outpost in the Whitetail Mountains, and she is awoken by the click, the sound springing her into action as it always does. With a growl, she reaches for it blindly where it sits under her pillow, and puts it to her lips. 

“Talk or don’t talk.” She snaps, sitting herself up. Boomer doesn’t stir, he stays where he is, curled up at the foot of the mattress. 

There is another long silence and she almost turns her radio off. 

“I think you might’ve been right.” Joseph says, and she is arrested by the tone of his voice. He sounds the most ‘normal’ she thinks she has ever heard him. He does not sound full of certainty, as he always does, he sounds like a man who has been up all night worrying about something. Tired, hoarse, unsure…

Alma almost can’t speak. 

“About what?” She asks. 

A shaky breath comes through from the other end. “My daughter.” He says, voice almost broken. It makes her heart race to hear him like this, it’s so strange and eerie she feels like she could be dreaming. She might have been right? He’s admitting he lied?

Alma doesn’t speak, because she isn’t really sure what to say. She’s wide awake now though, fully alert. 

“Ever since we had that conversation I’ve been so… out of sorts, so distressed and lost… But it made me _remember_ , I remember that night and it is not the way that I thought it was.” She hears a sniff, and wonders if he’s crying. “It’s blurry and it makes my head feel like it is going to be wrenched apart but… I remember it.”

His voice breaks again; Alma her hand to her mouth, confused and intrigued.

“But I wasn’t lying Alma, I thought… I truly _believed_ that I had killed her-”

Alma finds her voice, trying to speak clearly. “You weren’t lying by the end, Joseph, but you were lying when you first changed the story. You just convinced yourself it was true.” 

She expects an argument, a long response, but all he says is. “Yes.” And she knows he is crying from the strain in his tone. 

“Joseph…” It slips out of her mouth without purpose, his name.

Alma is not sure what to say, this feels so, so strange. 

Her instinct, despite it all, is to comfort him, but it is one she has to bite back, because this could very well be some kind of ploy to get her sympathy. If it is honest, it will be the first time she’s heard him truly admit fault. That’s big. 

“I feel like you see me in a way others don’t, Alma, in a way no one has for a very, very long time.” Joseph seems to collect himself a little, but his voice is still an outpouring of emotion. “I believe that’s why I think about you so often, why you _affect_ me so much.”

Her breath catches in her throat and she feels her face flush warm. She isn’t even sure why, his tone just sounds so confessional, like he’s revealing something he really shouldn’t and that Alma isn’t sure she wants to know. It’s not a shock to her that he thinks about her, she thinks about him too. But Alma thinks of him because she is trying to take him down, destroy his operation… It doesn’t sound like that’s what Joseph means. 

“I do see you in a way other people don’t, because I see _through_ you.” Alma says coldly, keeping all emotion out of her tone. “But trust me, I’m not the only one.” 

“The way that my enemies see me is not the same as the way _you_ see me.” Joseph says. “You don’t believe my preaching, and perhaps you think I’m a liar… But that’s not _all_ , is it, Alma? I can tell you see the man beyond the Father.” 

Again, Alma is struck quiet, almost baffled.

“I’m surprised you’ll admit there _is_ a man beyond the Father.” She says. At the sound of her voice Boomer has stirred awake, and walks sleepily over her legs to settle on her stomach; she strokes behind his ears, comforted by his presence. 

Joseph doesn’t respond for a long time, and she finds herself waiting nervously, looking into the dark room. 

“I didn’t think there was anymore.” He says, so quiet she almost can’t make it out. 

Alma’s mouth opens and closes, but before she can respond she hears the click of the radio, and the line goes silent. She didn’t think he’d be the one to hang up on her. 

For a long time, she finds herself sitting in the dark, absentmindedly stroking Boomer’s fur and trying to figure out what the hell that was all about. He’d sounded so genuine, so authentic. It makes him seem more like a real, tangible _man_ to think he might be capable of self-doubt. 

If he is being truthful, then that would make it twice she’s proved him wrong: she didn’t kill John like he thought she would and she was right about the fate of his child. She leans her head back against the wall behind her and chews her lip. Maybe if she can keep proving him wrong, she might be able to change his mind about other things.

Alma does not sleep for the rest of the night, and in the morning, she calls a meeting with the heads of the Whitetail Militia and a pretty large group of soldiers in the Wolf’s Den, a fresh certainty in her mind. She knows they won’t be happy with her plan, but she’s prepared to argue.

“Leave Jacob _alive_?” Stella scoffs, looking between Eli and Wheaty to confirm they heard her right. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not.” Alma says, shaking her head. She stands at the head of the table where the map of the region sits in the middle, arms crossed and resolute. Disbelieving looks are exchanged between those filling the room. 

Stella lets out a disbelieving little laugh again that annoys Alma, and Eli sighs and looks at her. 

“You’re gonna have to explain this one to us, Deputy.” He says, also sounding sceptical.

Alma sighs and collects her thoughts. It’s important to remember that they haven’t been frantically thinking about this all night, planning and scribbling like a madwoman. 

“We need to think about the bigger picture here. Sure, killing Jacob sounds like the best call right now, trust me, nothing would give me more satisfaction, but what does it actually _achieve_ apart from scratching an itch for revenge?” 

They’re listening to her, though many look unconvinced, so she continues. 

“We have to think about after. We will the cult out of here, and we can kill all its leaders, but then what? They’re all dead, order is restored and we’re all just fine that we rebuilt this place on a foundation of murder and revenge?”

“I didn’t come here to kill everybody, I came here to arrest the Seed’s and hold them accountable for what they’ve done. I think that can still happen.” Alma says, the words practiced. 

“Even if you could even get near enough that fucker to catch him, law doesn’t mean anything around here anymore.” Stella says, face hard. “Some people just need to die.” 

Alma stares her down. Reason might have been her opening salvo, but she’s willing to get more personal. 

“You kill him then.” She says, flat. Stella clearly isn’t sure how to respond to that, a look of surprise crossing her face. “No? You want him dead, but you’re quite happy to leave it to me to do the killing?” 

“Deputy-” Eli tries to cut in, feeling the tension in the room rise.

“No, Eli. Let’s have the conversation.” Alma can feel her blood pressure rising, but she keeps herself even. “I have broken my back for you people. Saving your families, retaking your land, killing so many men I can’t even begin to count them, and you’re all _happy_ to let me do it.” 

A shake threatens to show on her hands, so she keeps her arms tightly crossed.

“And for what? So at the end of it we can kill Jacob and prove Joseph Seed was right about me? Right about you? Right about _everything_?” She shakes her head. “No. He doesn’t get to be right. Not about this or what God wants or the fucking end of the world.”

Alma looks at them all, struck quiet and watching her probably more emotional than she’s ever allowed herself to be in front of them. 

“So I’m going to capture Jacob, I’m going to lock him up until I can get him out of Hope County and into the hands of authorities and I’m going to watch him stand trial for the shit that he’s done.” Her nostrils flare. “With or without any of your help.” 

Alma has to leave. As much as she knew they wouldn’t like the idea, she didn’t appreciate how emotional she would get. She pushes through the crowd, who part for her, and heads for the bunker steps. 

“Wait, Dep.” Eli’s voice stops her, and she turns to face him. “What’s the plan?”

Alma looks at him, and at the faces of everyone in the room. They don’t look ready to abandon her, not yet anyway, so she nods and comes back into the room, taking the maps and papers out of her backpack.

“First, we need to build a cell.” 

* * *

Joseph feels foolish for radioing Alma when he had been in that state. His mind had not been at its full capacity, he had been running on no sleep and frantic, desperate prayer. He can only imagine what she thinks, to have heard him so upset - that he is weak, probably.

It makes him reflexively shudder to be thought of that way, his parents hated when he acted weak and he has the welts on his back to show it. 

He knows what the admission has invited. It will open the doors to make her think that she can question the rest of his beliefs, pick apart every story that he has ever told. Joseph doesn’t care as much as he should - he thinks that it’s probably more conducive to letting her speak to him if he shows he’s capable of doubt. She had reacted with more patience than he thought she might after their last conversation. 

_‘I’ll see you when I bring you your brother’s head on a spike.’_ She had said, so harsh he could almost believe it. 

But still, Alma’s voice had not hardened when she had heard his upset. It had almost been worth it to hear her gentle from sleep and willing to talk to him again, at least a little. He had been right to tell her she has a good heart, despite what she says - even when it’s him, she won’t just hang up on a person in distress. 

It shakes him to remember that night he had called her; instead of praying like he should, he’d turned to _her_ , he’d wanted to hear _her_ voice above any other. 

Though unintentional, his moment of vulnerability has delivered him some clarity. Now he knows for sure, just in the way she had said his name _‘Joseph…’_ , that they are not only made to cause the other pain. 

He also knows, because of the effect that the sound of her voice had on him, that denying his lust is working counter to his goals. Joseph feels a lot about her that is more than base desire, but base desire it certainly there.

Though it is sinful, entirely trying to repress it is causing his work to suffer… How can he stand in his church and address his congregation with a pure heart if his mind is constantly interrupted by thoughts of her? Her mouth, her skin, the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts?

So, he accepts that he will have to atone for it later, and he indulges now. 

It has been a very long time so he allowed himself it, and he closes his eyes as he sits back against the headboard. Still the middle of the day, the high window lets in enough light that it isn’t completely dark behind his eyes, and the slant of light warms part of his leg. 

Alma had only been in his church once, and he doubts that she even knows his room is up here. He imagines her there at the foot of his bed, warmth radiating off her, and he imagines that smile he has seen precious few times when she crawls between his legs slowly, and the front of her dress dips, showing her breasts to him. 

He isn’t sure why he always imagines her in a dress, maybe it’s because it makes it feel more like a fantasy, far away from his Eden where she always has to dress tactically. Joseph knows the shape of her body though, he can conjure it up in his mind what the softness of her thighs would feel like if she straddled his hips, and he can almost feel the weight of her round ass pressing against where he’s already getting uncomfortably hard in his jeans.

Joseph unfastens them, and strokes himself properly for the first time in a long time. He hisses at the feeling, momentarily taken out of the fantasy when he is hit by how good it feels to touch himself. He closes his eyes, because he needs to have her on his mind when he does it, he needs to get it out of his system.

She would slip the dress off over her head and drop it on the floor, her bare breasts would sway as she leaned forward to kiss him, and she would writhe her hips against his hardness, and chuckle breathily into his mouth. 

His hand is a terrible substitute for the heaven he is sure it would feel like to slip inside her, and he tightens his grip and groans aloud when he thinks of the sound she might make. A whine? A deep-throated moan? A swear, most likely. 

_“Fuck…”_ She would say, and her perfect full lips would open and she would hold eye contact with him is she ground his cock inside her the way she liked. _“Joseph.”_

Joseph isn’t going to last much longer, he’s too sensitive, and he’s been holding off following this fantasy to its end for what feels like forever. He wishes he could smell the blonde hair he imagines falling round both their faces, he wishes he could hear her pleasured, scandalised noise as he grabs her ass a bit too hard to encourage her to pick up speed and ride him properly. 

Then they aren’t even in this room anymore, they’re in hers, or how he imagines her bedroom to be in whatever apartment or house she had been in before. Apartment, most likely, small, neat, a cherry candle burning on her vanity table. 

She would really lose herself in her own space. Let her head fall back and scrape her nails lightly over his abdomen as she chases her pleasure how she likes, make all kinds of noises and blush later when she sees her neighbours. 

What would she do if he tried to sit up and turn her over? Put a hand on his throat and push him back down? He imagines her smirking and applying a little bit of pressure. Joseph grunts. 

He focuses on the neglected tip of his cock, and wonders what it might take to make her cum. Perhaps she might light her hair to be pulled a bit, maybe he should take her nipple into his mouth. She might like him to say something filthy, which he would if she liked it. Whichever way, he would get her there.

 _“Yes, baby.”_ He might say, his accent thicker when he isn’t in his right mind. _“Your pussy feels so good.”_

He hopes she would call his name again, he sees her throwing back her head with the sunlight beaming behind her, her naked body delighted and filled with him. 

With the imagined sound of her rapture, the flush of her cheeks and her clenching and unclenching around him in pleasured twitches, Joseph finishes with a deep moan leaving his chest as he shoots ropes of cum over his stomach, the feeling stretching out for a long time and making him almost dizzy.

Imagined Alma flicks the tip of her tongue over both his lips, and his eyes open to his empty bedroom. 

Joseph turns his head to the side and looks over at the wanted poster of her at the other side of the room over his desk. A picture of Alma taken from a security camera she had passed, leather jacket on and face serious, shotgun on her shoulder. She’s frowning, like he sees her do a lot. She probably would not be happy about this, either. 

His seed cools on his stomach, and he stands up to go to his bathroom and clean up. The shame starts to set in, like he can feel eyes on him and what he’s done. He runs the wet rag over his stomach, and the LUST scar over his abdomen. Alma probably finds it ugly - perhaps she finds all of him ugly. PRIDE. His sins are many today.

But when he dresses, and leaves the church to walk out into the compound, he feels better, his head feels clearer and there is not the lingering feeling of bone-deep frustration in him. The shame isn’t crippling him. He greets his followers with care and gentleness, he checks on the gardens and the Bliss crop. 

John comes to his side as he walks through the compound. 

“Are you feeling better, Joseph? I know you’ve been distracted.” He says.

“Yes, I’m feeling a lot better.” Joseph nods, bible under his arm. “Things seem clearer today.” 

“First day of summer.” John says, looking up to the absolutely cloudless blue sky. “This place is going to stink.”

He can’t help but laugh a bit at the way his brother wrinkles his nose in disdain.

“I’ll be sure to add a parable about regular bathing into my next sermon.” Joseph says, and he sees the look of surprise cross John’s face to hear him making a joke. They used to joke together all the time. 

Joseph looks up at the sky as well, the day looks too beautiful to think that God is angry with him, though he knows the naivety in that thought. He thinks of Alma, and wonders if she’s looking at the same sky. 

* * *

The plan goes from sounding absolutely ridiculous to actually possible over the hours Alma spends with the Whitetail Militia planning it. 

They’ll build his cell in the Lamb of God Church - Grace says it’s basement is perfect for it, and it’s deep in what was John’s territory, but now is firmly in Resistance hands. There’s no way the cult could make it all the way through all the outposts between the church and the territory borders, whether they came from Faith’s side or Joseph’s. 

It’ll take a bit of time to get the cell built - others were quite happy to let him eat out of a dog bowl and piss in a bucket, but Alma refused. If they were going to prove a point, they were going to treat him better than he’d treated people. A cot, a slot where food trays can be passed through, a plumbed in toilet. 

Capturing him might be hard, but Alma is pretty sure that getting hold of the authorities on the outside and getting him out of state to get arrested properly will be even harder. She knows Whitehorse has been trying for weeks, negotiating help to come in and get these people out. 

Withdraw, is all they say, leave it alone.

Alma’s thought about it; there’s nothing stopping her just from leaving and pretending this all never happened. But she can’t now, she cares about these people too much, and she fears Joseph’s expansion if someone doesn’t put a stop to him now. Those on the outside still don’t understand how deep this goes, how dangerous it all is.

Maybe the Marshall could convince them, but he’s still stuck with Faith, lost in the Bliss.

So Alma will do what she can for now, use herself as bait, knock him out, bring him in. He might turn out to be a useful bargaining chip, if nothing else. 

She suspects that when all is said and done, Stella isn’t going to like her for this. Alma can tell that she’s just going along for now, and feels that she won’t ultimately forgive her for this. Maybe that’s something a person just has to deal with when they’re leading, being disliked, disagreed with. She wonders how often people disagree with Joseph and how he deals with that.

It’s been a long time since she’s heard from him, and an awfully long time since she’s seen him. For reasons she can’t even articulate to herself, she feels the need to talk to him. Maybe it’s the vulnerability he’d shown in their last conversation that’s opened the door to make her think that… _something_ is possible. All hope isn’t lost, maybe.

Alma is up in the middle of the night, as usual, looking over the files and listening to music quietly in her big bedroom at John’s former ranch. She’s a little bit high, because if she’s going to get close enough to Jacob to knock him out, she’s going to have to build up a tolerance to the Bliss darts. 

Eli’s idea, actually, and a pretty good one, strange as it is to voluntarily smoke the stuff herself. 

Cross-legged on the bed, she picks up a photograph of Joseph taken in secret. A baptism, back when the authorities were only a little suspicious of him and she’s pretty sure he hadn’t murdered anyone yet. 

His shirt is off, and he stands waist deep in the water, hands cupping the face of a woman in a white dress. The tattoos are all there, but the carvings aren’t. He’s smiling a bit, looking serene and full of piety. Alma cocks her head to the side and regards the picture. He’s handsome, really, under it all.

It’s a thought she’d had when she first walked into the church, when she had been intimidated and unsure, but surprised, that he looked better in person than he did in photographs. 

Maybe she’d assumed he’d be dirty and greasy, like the guards she’d passed on her way in. He isn’t that way though, he’s quite put together really, yellow shades, patched up jeans and all. 

She puts down the photo. It might have occurred to her before that he’s quite good looking, but she’s not going to be dwelling on it, she can’t, because then she’ll think about when they had been in that cabin together and he had pressed his forehead against hers.

The dream she’d had of kissing him in that moment wasn’t just born of the intensity of it all; he’d been her type, back in the day; older, a little dishevelled, interesting, in some way.

Shit, he would blow every guy she had ever slept with out of the water when it comes to being _interesting_. 

An image comes into her head, just for a moment, of what might have happened if they met under normal circumstances. 

They’re in her apartment, they’re on her couch, he’s on top of her, gripping the armrest above her head and groaning as he fucks her forcefully, making the little couch shake on the wood floor and an obscene slapping noise echo through the place.

Alma drops the photo in the file and closes it quickly, cheeks flushing and stomach flipping. No, no. This is not something that should occur to her for even a second. 

But denying it is making it worse. He’s well and truly in her head and it’s not all anger and disdain, he’s mixed up in every thought that crosses her mind, including the sexual ones.

That’s how she rationalises it, anyway and that's how she rationalises picking up the radio and tuning into his frequency. A least if they talk, it's like he's in the room and not her brain. 

“Are you alone?” She asks, the thought occurring to her that he might be a bigger hypocrite than she thought and there could be a whole line of women warming the bed of the Father, hoping to create some holy child.

There isn’t too much of a delay before he responds. “Yes.” He says, groggy from sleep. Another reminder that he’s a real man and not some verse-spouting robot. 

Alma takes a long breath, not even sure what she wants to say. It’s incredibly fucked up, but there’s a bit of comfort in his voice. Enemies or no, they _know_ each other. She’s so sick of being angry.

The Bliss talks for her.

“One of my best memories from before all this is back in college,” she says, leaning back comfortably, “I studied criminology, of course, and me and a couple of my friends were studying cults, I wrote my thesis on them. That’s why I was the one sent here to get you.”

“Oh.” Is all he says, quiet, like he’d rather she speak than him.

“So, we went on this kind of pilgrimage to different important sites to do with cults. LA, Texas, San Diego. That’s kind of beside point, but we did it like this huge road trip all up the West coast. It was just this group of girls acting foolish and getting drunk and pretending we were researching... One night, we were driving through Nevada and the sun was just setting, and we found these natural hot springs, just the bluest water you have ever seen… We parked our van, did tequila shots, sat in this steamy water and watched the sun set over the dunes.” Alma smiles to herself as she thinks about it. 

“That’s one of my happiest memories, I think.” She says, and shuffles her legs under the covers, relaxing and trying not to overthink. 

“It sounds wonderful.” He says sincerely. 

“I want to know one of yours.” She says. “From before you were the Father.”

That brings another long pause on the other end of the line, like he’s trying to figure out her motive. He won’t succeed, because she isn’t even sure what her motive is herself, if she has one at all.

“Honestly, I don’t have very many.” He says, and Alma believes it, after everything she knows happened to him. “My life had very little purpose before Eden’s Gate.” 

“You must have _one_.” She gently insists.

Joseph sighs, she wonders if he’s lying comfortably in his bed too, wherever it is, arm behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. 

“I didn’t finish high school.” He says; Alma had known that. “But I used to work in a diner close to it when I should have been in my last year. And this girl who went there would come in with her friends… she was very kind to me. We ended up ‘dating,’ I suppose, although I had no idea why she seemed to like me.” Joseph chuckles a little bit, and Alma smiles despite herself. 

“We would take drives and she’d play music that I didn’t particularly like, but she was very sweet, this beautiful blonde, and she saw past my imperfections… for a summer anyway.” He says it with a fondness, and she believes the story. “Anyway, that’s a happy memory, I would say.” 

“Hmm.” Alma hums. “That’s nice.” She says, eyes closing with fatigue. A pimply teenage boy working in a diner with a crush on a pretty blonde, that’s who he had been once. 

“Why-” Joseph starts, but she doesn’t let him finish. 

“I think we should see each other again, tomorrow, same time and place.” Alma follows the impulse.

“You assume I have no plans?” He asks, levity in his voice, almost like they’re talking as friends.

Alma smirks. “Tell them God says you have to do something else. I’d use that excuse all the time if I could.” 

“That isn’t funny.” Joseph says, though she is quite sure she can hear him smiling. 

"Are you going to come?" She asks, absentmindedly chewing the inside of her mouth. 

"Yes." He says, simple as that, as if it would always be the answer he would give her.

Alma sighs, an unexpected sadness settling in her stomach. Her emotions are all over the place, maybe she's higher than she thought. 

"What if I'm just being nicer to you right now so I can kill you when we meet?" She asks, because a part of her still feels that's maybe what's going to end up happening in the end anyway. Even if she can save the other three, they aren't the Father. 

Joseph sighs too, though he doesn't sound sad like she is. "Well, I'll find out, won't I?"

This time, Alma is the one to turn off her radio, nodding as if he can see her.

When she puts the radio on her nightstand, she realises that her heart is racing. At least no one is around but her to ask what the fuck she is thinking. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing good can come from calling your crush at 3am, come on guys.
> 
> Feel like this one had a lot of jumping around and little time skips, next chapter will be a lot more linear and talky, I'm eager to get these two in a room together again.


	6. The Cabin, Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning 1: This is very long  
> Warning 2: Smuuuuuuuuuuuuut.

Alma half expects the cabin to be trashed one day when she comes by, taken over by the cult and covered in religious paraphernalia. It never is though, it’s always the same, pretty and quiet, nicely hidden in its spot beside the lake.

She doesn’t go straight inside when she arrives, she stands on the little fishing deck for a moment and watches the sun rise. It’s getting warm, she thinks summer must be coming if it hasn’t arrived already. That’s why she’s dressed light on this particular day, denim shorts and a thin plaid shirt that lets a bit of air circulate. Shit, she misses summer dresses. Not very practical for her day-to-day activities though. 

Meeting Joseph isn’t filling her with the same kind of trepidation it had the first time. Now, it feels somehow overdue - so much feels like it has happened between them, and they haven’t even been in a room with each other for weeks. 

Either way, when she hears his boots on the wood behind her, she doesn’t feel fear or even rage, she just turns her head so he knows she’s heard him, and looks back at the lake.

“Beautiful morning, right?” She says. 

“The Lord provides.” Joseph says, and walks up next to her with the ease of a friendly neighbour. 

Alma can smell his clothes again, clean white shirt, dried in the sunlight, rolled up to his elbows. No jacket today. She looks at him in her peripheral vision, and thinks about the last time she saw him, through those bars in Jacob’s cage… Drugged out and crying and saying she was sorry about his wife and his baby. The anger she felt at his walking away doesn’t come back though, not really, maybe it was just disappointment all along. 

The heat is starting to bear down already, even in the early morning light. Alma sits herself down on the dock.

“Are we not going inside?” He asks, and she looks up at him, squinting against the sun. Fuck, he’s tall.

“It’s kind of stuffy in there.” She says. “I’d prefer the fresh air.” 

Joseph sits down beside her, crossing his long, thin legs and resting his hands on his calf. He looks like some kind of 1960s hippie preacher sitting like that, in those glasses, the thought almost makes her laugh. 

Then it occurs to her that they haven’t actually sat _next to_ each other before, and it feels a bit strange, so she turns so she’s leaning her back against the little wood post and facing him, leg bent and the other hanging off the dock. The tip of her boot almost touches the water. 

“Are you alright?” He asks. Alma sees a genuine look of concerned confusion in the knit in his forehead. She actually has to think about the question for a moment. 

“No, I’m not.” She says, and laughs a little. “I actually feel like I could be going fucking crazy, to be honest.” 

“Why do you think that?” He asks, all patience.

Alma just gestures between them, like it’s obvious.

“In recent memory I told you I was going to decapitate your brother and bring you his head, Joseph. And then the other night, I heard you _cry_ , and now we’re here, sitting on this dock… And I’m not blaming _you_ for this, by the way, I know this was my idea.” She looks over at the water instead of him, trying to articulate. “But I can’t remember ever being so all over the place. Going from being _so angry_ to just at someone… not that angry anymore.” 

Joseph is looking at her in that penetrative way, so she chooses not to meet his gaze.

"I go from hating you to feeling really sorry for you." She says, honestly. "Maybe that's why I can't stay mad. It's too exhausting and it doesn't seem fair."

"In what way?" He asks. 

"Doesn't seem fair to be mad at someone who's so mentally ill." She says, and she doesn't say it with cruelty, but it sounds harsh coming out of her mouth.

Joseph doesn't seem to mind though, he considers it for a moment. “Or perhaps you feel what I have felt since you arrived.” He finally says, softly. Alma feels her pulse pick up in her neck at the tone of his voice.

“What?” She asks, throwing in a little eyeroll to show she doesn’t buy it. 

“That you and I are in some way connected, beyond antagonism.” He says.

Alma wishes that a small part of her didn’t feel like he was right about this. Whatever the hell _it_ is, she doesn’t hate Joseph like she should. But she feels it's more like a kind of kinship, that they recognise they would have gotten along in other circumstances. Some divine, pre-ordained connection just doesn't seem realistic to her. 

“‘In some way connected’ is a little vague for someone who talks directly to God.” She says, and plays with the shoelace of the boot she has resting in front of her. 

“I agree.” He says, and she is surprised to hear him admit that. “His voice has been quiet for some time.” 

Alma regards him and the sadness on his face when he says it. 

“Why’s that?” She asks. 

“I…” Joseph swallows, considering his words. “There have been times in my life when I have struggled to hear his word - I can’t pretend to understand why and when He chooses to speak to me… All I’ve heard of you is whispers, you have a mystery to you even on the cosmic level.” 

Again, Alma almost wants to laugh, it’s such a _big_ thing to say to a person, so strange, and she’s taken aback by the idea of it. 

“I don’t consider myself to be very mysterious.” She says.

“No?” 

Alma shakes her head. “No, I think pretty much what you see is what you get.” 

“And what do you think people see?” He asks. Shit, they’re straying into some therapy session territory here.

“Just a girl, 29 years old, trying her best.” She shrugs, laughing a little bit at how silly it feels to categorise herself. 

“Hmm.” Joseph says, consideringly. 

“You disagree.” Alma says, because she can tell from his quiet that he does.

“No, I believe you are a young woman trying her best, but that’s not all you are.” He says. “You’re very sad, down to your bones. It's because you're more in tune with the world and its people than even you realise.”

Throat dry, Alma swallows. “You said that to me when we were first here.” She says. “But you don’t know me well enough to know how I feel deep down like that.”

“I don’t have to, Alma,” Joseph says, “I can see it in you. Perhaps your friends know you in certain ways better than I do… but do they notice when you are only pretending to smile because your heart is so heavy?” 

The question strikes her hard; her stomach feels like it is flipping over. It makes her uncomfortable, makes her want to cover up Joseph’s eyes with her hand and stop him looking at her, because she isn’t sure she’s ever felt so _seen_. 

She’s never felt so seen and the one doing the seeing is _Joseph Seed._

“Maybe not.” Alma’s voice his shaking a little when she speaks, almost on the verge of tears. “But they wouldn’t walk away and leave me to get brainwashed and tortured.” 

It’s a little off the point, but he made her feel defensive; she loves her friends, but she knows he’s right that there are layers of her that they don’t understand. A nausea sets in at the thought that Joseph might somehow know her better than Grace, or Sharky, or Nick. 

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” Joseph says gently, and with sincerity. 

Alma bites back the feeling, because she doesn’t want this conversation to devolve into a fight like it always does because she can’t keep a lid on her emotions.

“You didn’t.” She insists firmly. “I get mad sometimes - I just don’t like you very much.” 

Shocking her entirely, Joseph laughs at that, properly laughs.

“No, I’ve gathered that.” He says, and he looks younger when he smiles like that, crows feet on the corners of his eyes and all. Alma feels taken aback, unsure whether she wants to push him in the lake or laugh as well. “I suppose it’s deserved.” 

Crazy, this is all so crazy. Maybe they’re _both_ crazy. 

There is a moment of quiet, before Joseph gets serious again. “I am sorry I left you there.” He says. 

Alma doesn’t particularly appreciate the apology, honestly. 

“You should apologise to everyone he’s done that to then, because it isn’t just me.” She says firmly. “All of you do fucked up things but you’ve got nothing on Jacob’s brutality. John might have given me an ugly fucking tattoo and Faith drugged me out, but they never made me kill people.”

Joseph is quiet for a while, and she can’t discern his expression as he looks out over the water. At least that penetrating gaze isn’t fixed on her. She looks at his profile, the curve of his nose and the few grey hairs in his neat beard. Handsome.

She wants to ask: ‘why don’t you just leave and go back to being a normal guy?’

“I should talk to Jacob about his methods.” Joseph says. “You are right to question them.”

Alma feels her heart pick up in her chest. Does he mean it? Did they actually just make some progress here? It takes her a moment to find her tongue.

“Thank you.” Is all she says. 

There is another moment of quiet, where they both watch a duck float by on the water, their eyes both following its journey across the lake and close to them, dipping in its head in and shaking it off again. Alma feels the sun on her skin, and is glad she put on SPF before she left or she would burn terribly. 

“When you called me last night and asked me about a happy memory…”

Ah, she was wondering if he would bring that up.

“Is it because you want to _know_ me?” He leans forward a bit, elbows resting on his thighs. Alma considers that for a moment, deciding how honest she wants to be.

“I - yes, I do want to know you.” Alma admits. “I suppose sometimes, it’s hard not to get caught up in the idea that you’re some kind of… icon. Something separate from just a man with a fair bit of power.” 

He’s looking at her closely again, listening intently. 

“But I suppose I’m just making things harder for myself.” 

“How?” He asks, like he doesn’t know.

“For when I have to kill you.” She says, though she says it without feeling, like it’s an expression she’s repeated a thousand times. 

“Are you going to?” He asks, his gentle voice washing pleasantly over her. Alma can see why people get drawn into him, he has a way about him, it can make a person feel comforted when he’s at his best. 

But, when he’s at his worst, he presides over terrible things, and watches evil be done in his name.

Alma finds herself looking at him for a long time, but he doesn’t shy away from her gaze, of course he doesn’t. _Is she going to kill him? Is she?_ She wonders if he can see the conflict raging in her between being so intrigued by him and so desperate to put a stop to everything he does, his life's work. 

Slowly, she moves so she’s sitting on her knees instead, and shuffles over to him on the worn wood of the deck, until they’re very close to each other. Joseph falters a little bit then, glancing down, unsure of what she’s about to do.

Like she’s acting it, testing it, she reaches up her hands and puts them both on his throat, thumbs over his windpipe. She doesn’t press at all, she just holds her hands there and imagines what it would feel like. Joseph… Doesn’t seemed fazed at all. She can feel him watching her, while she looks at her hands around his throat. 

His pulse beats rhythmically against her palm, a living person with blood running through his veins and a heart beating in his chest. 

Alma looks at his face, and sees his bright blue eyes so close to hers, and feels his breath ghosting her lips. It comes back again, that awful traitorous desire to kiss him - what would _that_ feel like? She feels like the earth would actually shake. 

She is definitely going fucking crazy. 

But she isn’t panicking, still, for whatever reason, she feels quite calm, and it’s the longest they’ve gone without her losing her temper and getting the need to run. When she takes her hands from his neck, she thinks she notices his chest deflate in a long breath. Had he been a little scared she was going to do it? Or… or something else?

“Joseph?” She says. 

“Yes?” He asks, and she thinks he might sound a little hoarse.

“I think we should go in the cabin and get high together.” Alma stands up quickly, and reaches in her shorts pocket for the two joints she’d rolled before she arrived, a little bit of Bliss in each so she can keep building her tolerance. _He_ doesn’t know why she’s smoking it though. “Eden’s Gate might have ruined my life but I have to thank you for Bliss, knocks weed right out of the water.” 

Alma hands him his; she expects an argument, but doesn’t wait to hear it, instead walking straight off the deck and onto the cabin porch. The door is always unlocked, and she goes inside, the chill of the shade actually quite pleasant after the heat outside.

Joseph does follow her, and closes the door behind him. He puts the joint between his lips and takes a box of matches from his inner jacket pocket, with surprise, she watches him light it and take a long drag. 

“I’ll make us some lunch.” He says, walking past her to the kitchen without a care in the world. 

As she lights up her own, she notices in surprise that Joseph has stocked the fridge at some point. Had he come here the night before? Earlier this morning? Either way, they’re standing in the kitchen smoking and making baloney sandwiches. 

Well, okay, shit. 

* * *

Joseph makes a pretty nice sandwich, she has to give it to him. She wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all he really eats given how slim he is. Alma had liked to eat before, junk food and big, ridiculous dinners with her friends, but now she’s usually too tired to even think about having more than a cereal bar and going to bed. 

They cut an incredibly normal picture, sitting in their separate armchairs, eating sandwiches with just the right amount of mustard, drinking water and getting a little high. She could almost forget that they were enemies.

They actually talk for a long time about relatively normal things. Alma tells him more about how she had been before - she had won a spelling bee in 9th grade, her first boyfriend had been called Tommy, she loves Bruce Springsteen, she's never been to Spain but she would like to go.

And he, to her surprise, talks about himself, not just the sad parts or the ones that involve his religion - he's never been out of the country before, he'd loved the X-Files as a teen, when he first got his own place, he got a dog called Wally, he had been terrible at school, but good at history because his memory is so sharp. 

It makes Alma feel a little sad to think about; as much as she may have instigated it, speaking normally with him just makes her think about what he could be doing if things hadn't gone so terrible wrong in his life. 

“Alma,” Joseph sets down his plate on the coffee table; he hasn’t lost his posture at all, while Alma feels like she’s slouching, “do you believe in God?”

Well, at least he’s going with the kind of conversation two stoned people normally have. 

“No.” She says, not really having to think about it. “I never did, even when I was a kid. I mean, I was baptised, but I think that was more for my dad than my ma. She didn’t really believe in God either.” 

“Your Father was religious?”

Alma takes a drag and shrugs. “A little I guess, I didn’t know him very well before he died.”

“Why not?”

“He moved to Manitoba to work on a fishing boat.” She smirks, thinking about how ridiculous it sounds now when it had hurt her so much at the time. “I was 14.” 

“That must have upset you.” He says, that comforting tone in his voice. It isn’t really necessary, she can’t say it affects her much anymore. 

“It did then but it doesn’t anymore. Guy was kind of an idiot, had to take work where he could get it I guess. We were better off without him in the end…” Alma stretches out her legs comfortably. “I mean we were poor as shit, but we had a good time, just us, listening to Fleetwood Mac and dancing in the kitchen...” 

“I’m glad you had that.” Joseph says, like he really means it. Alma doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, sadness settles in her chest when she thinks about her mother young and beautiful, because then she remembers how she’d been in the end, sickly and pale.

“Does it bother you that I don’t believe in God?” She asks him. Joseph turns the rosary beads over in his hand thoughtfully. 

“It bothers me because I want your salvation… God loves you whether you believe He’s there or not, but you must have faith in order to be invited into His kingdom.” 

“So he loves me but he’d send me to Hell anyway?” Alma stands up slowly and stretches out her limbs, setting down her joint in the ashtray on the table. Her muscles feel relaxed, and her mind is pleasantly quiet. She has to take a break though before she starts seeing stars clouding her vision. “That’s not very nice.” 

“Clearly you haven’t read the Old Testament.” Joseph says, a little bit of amusement in his voice.

“Is that how you justify your special brand of ‘tough love?’” She asks, hands on her hips as she looks over the trinkets on the fireplace leisurely. Little ornaments that don’t match: cherubs with pink cheeks, little tin cars, old beer bottle lids. There’s a red toy car that Alma picks up and regards in her hand.

“I believe that there can be a kindness in cruelty when eternal salvation is on the line, yes.” Joseph says. 

“Hmm.” Alma sighs, and spins the little wheels of the car with a finger. “I believe you’re full of shit.” 

“I know you do.” He says. “That’s alright. I’m not going to stop trying to save you.”

She sets down the car again, not looking at him. The devotion he speaks with, devotion to _everything_ , it’s almost overwhelming. 

“How are you going to save me?” She asks, turning to face him where he sits in the chair. 

His posture has relaxed some, his elbows resting on the arms of the chair and his knees slightly apart as he leans back. The blunt hangs between his rosary-twisted fingers and the smoke floats towards his face. It’s still a hot day, she thinks he has undone a couple of buttons at his collar so she can just about see the wings of the swallows tattooed on his skin. 

Alma really wants to climb into his lap.

“However I have to.” He says softly, regarding her close. 

“From all my sins?” She asks, and she feels kind of like the air has shifted in the room. Her inhibitions are still there, but pleasantly muted, and she’s feeling that need to _push_ again, to test the limits of his composure. 

“Yes.” He says, and _fuck_ , it’s hard to tell behind his lenses but she thinks he might have looked her up and down. Joseph’s never seen so much of her skin before. Does he like it? Does he care at all?

“Even the ones that make you angry?”

“Your sins don’t make me angry, Alma.” He says.

“Oh? You seemed pretty angry when you found out I’d fucked someone.” Alma doesn’t say it with harshness, she feels pretty playful actually, as much as she knows that she might be straying into some dangerous territory. 

Alma expects a small reprimand, a weary, annoyed expression on his face. But he just looks at her for a long time, in that way that makes her feel like she’s naked and he’s assessing her from toes to hairline.

“Envy.” Is all he says, and suddenly the light little smile on Alma’s face vanishes. She gets the feeling he’s calling her bluff, but he’s not giving anything away on his face, just watching her, looking relaxed as can be.

Sirens go off in her head, wailing, _'what is happening, what is happening!?'_ But she knows what's happening, because she's the one that brought it here, she's the one that got them both relaxed and high and talking about sex. 

“You were envious of-”

“I don’t hold myself above other men, Alma.” Joseph stands up then and sets the joint down beside hers in the ashtray. “I’m sure you’re perceptive enough to have realised the effect you might have on me.” 

They’re standing too close, she needs to put space between them but she doesn’t. Her pulse thrums in her neck. 

“No, I haven’t.” She shakes her head, finding it hard to tilt up her chin and look him in the eye. Joseph reaches down and pulls his shirt untucked, her mouth goes dry when he lifts the material up and tugs the waistband of his trousers down a little. 

LUST, that horrible jagged scar on his abdomen, looking angry red and freshly reopened. 

“Fuck.” Alma instinctively backs up a couple of steps in horror. “Shit, why did you do that?” 

“We have to atone, Alma, you know this by now.” He says, all calm, not putting down his shirt yet. “You say you want to know me, to see me as a man and not an idol, well here is the proof of my humanity. I won’t hide from it.” 

Alma puts her hands on her face and lets out a breath, mind suddenly scrambled and heart racing with all the implications of what he’s saying. 

“You did that because of me? Because you’ve been… lusting after me?” She doesn’t look at him, the unpleasant scarring on his stomach burning behind her eyelids. 

“Yes.” He says. “And I am sorry if that repulses you, I am aware that my wayward mind may be an affront to you as well as the Lord.”

“No, no, no.” Alma shakes her head, frustrated and overwhelmed. “That doesn’t repulse me, Joseph, it’s… It’s _normal_ . I don’t care that you might have had those thoughts about me, you can’t control it. But I care about _that_.” She gestures abdomen, where he has dropped his shirt. “I don’t want you to do that because of me.”

“It isn’t because of you.” Joseph says, clearly seeing her distress and trying to speak in a calming way. “It’s because of me. You’ve done nothing but exist, in your own skin and your own beauty. I should have more self-control than to think of you that way.” 

Alma’s cheek flush, she feels how hot her face gets. 

“Our thoughts go places we don’t mean them to, you don’t have to fucking _mutilate_ yourself about it.” She sits back down on the chair with a huff of a breath and puts her palms to her forehead. 

Of course she’d considered it before, that he might think about her like that and his intensity might be born out of something more. It’s quite another thing to know that for a fact, though. And it’s hard to care that he thinks about her sexually when her mind is focussed on the idea of him cutting himself open about it. 

“You’re upset.” Joseph says softly, matter-of-factly. Alma laughs a little bit, resting her elbows on her knees and looking up at him. 

“I’m annoyed.” She counters.

With a sigh, Joseph moves over to her and crouches down where she’s sitting so they are eye-to-eye. It makes her feel like a little kid crying on the steps, and he’s the teacher, come to ask who was pulling her pigtails.

“Why?” He asks.

“If you think I’m beautiful why can’t you just go home and jerk off about it like a normal person? Getting it out of your system might help you chill the fuck out.” She says flatly. 

To her surprise, he laughs again a little, looking over her face.

“I did, that’s what the scar is for.” He says, again, Alma’s heart feels as if it is suddenly throwing itself against her ribcage. “It is the _indulgence_ in the lust that is the most sinful.”

An image flashes in her head of him in his church, kneeling down behind the pulpit and stroking himself in his hand. She really, really, really should row this conversation back and talk about something else. 

It takes her a long time to finally meet his eye, his gaze piercing her and not looking the least bit bashful or embarrassed. _‘You are fucking crazy.’_ She wants to say. _‘Get the fuck away from me.’_ She should say. _‘You are disgusting.’_ She should spit and shove him away from her. 

But she doesn’t say that, instead she lets her mouth speak without engaging her brain.

“What did you think about when you touched yourself over me?” She asks, and finally sees him falter. Joseph seems as surprised as she is, her own voice sounding foreign and far away to her. Maybe it’s him being so close to her and how nice he smells, and it doesn’t matter who he is at all; he’s just a handsome man right there in front of her face, and she needs to get laid and she’s talking stupid. Maybe.

But that’s not all it is though.

Part of it is the fact that it’s _him_ ; it’s him that’s making her completely forget why they even came here, it’s him that has her heart thudding in her chest and it’s him that’s made heat rush between her legs with his admission. 

“Alma…” He casts his eye down, a warning in his voice, but he’s still right there crouching in front of her. She wonders if Joseph knows that he’s moved a bit closer to her.

“Tell me.” She says, fighting off a full bodied shiver. “And I’ll decide if I forgive you.” 

They aren’t even touching, but it feels like they are, sharing body heat and air in this little cabin; Alma feels that familiar excitement flood her, molten. Feeling this way is probably very, very wrong but caring about the wrongness isn’t important to her right now. 

Joseph isn’t staring into her eyes now, he’s looking at her lips, and she can tell that he’s feeling the same way, it’s emanating off him. 

“I imagined what your bedroom looks like,” he admits, voice so low and quiet she wouldn’t be able to hear if they weren’t so close, “and what it would be like to have you ride me on your bed.” 

A shaky breath leaves Alma and she knows she’s getting increasingly wet; her nipples press against her bra, her fingertips tingle. She wants to touch him, but there’s still something in her that stops it. Instinct maybe. Self-preservation. _Do not put your neck in the lion’s mouth, Alma._

“What would it be like?” She asks. Joseph pauses for a moment, watching her mouth. He reaches out carefully and his hand comes to rest on her cheek, she shudders again, his thumb ghosts her lower lip enough to make it tingle.

“Heaven.” He says.

Then she isn’t sure who goes in first, all she knows is his lips are on hers and she’s wrapping her arms around his shoulders to pull him close to her. Joseph groans into her mouth, his hand finds the chair arm beside her and he leans his body into her, half bent. 

Alma presses her tongue into his mouth and makes a desperate noise, one of her legs wrapping around his hips to pull him even close to her. It’s wrong, a little voice in the back of her head is screaming at her that it’s wrong, but it feels so good. 

Joseph tugs her other leg to wrap around him, and pulls away just enough to murmur into her mouth: “Hold onto me.” 

She does as he says, wrapping her arms and legs tighter around him; Joseph’s hands both come under her thighs, and he lifts her until he’s standing and she’s holding onto him. A giddy noise of surprise leaves her; he’s a lot stronger than he looks, apparently. 

Her head is too fuzzy to even realise where he’s carrying her until her ass hits the dining table and he’s laying her down with his mouth on her neck. Alma delights in the feeling of his beard on her skin, eyes fluttering shut as he kisses her neck reverently. He’s hard, she can feel it pressing between her legs where they’re apart, either side of his thin hips.

Joseph is breathing heavy and ragged, a hand squeezes her breast, the other grasping her thigh and keeping her lower half tight to him where he stands. She rolls her hips to rub against where is erection his trapped in his jeans, and thinks she could get off like this, everything heightened and dirty and perfect.

Alma has no idea how she has so quickly come from thinking he's quite good looking to being more desperate for him than she's ever been for anyone. Her subconscious mind had been working overtime, maybe, while her conscious one worked desperately to squash any thoughts of thinking of him that way. Perhaps the Bliss has helped to lift the veil as well, leaving her as nothing but a raw nerve of _want_. 

When he pulls back to get his shirt off over his head with rushing hands, Alma sits up, hearing her own breathlessness, and pulls her own shirt off, dropping it on the ground with his. When she reaches behind herself to unfasten her bra. Joseph takes off his glasses, watching her with so much hunger that she doesn’t think she can handle it. 

And she’s almost waiting for the moment when the spell breaks, when her conscience finally kicks in and stops her. But it doesn’t happen, and when her bra is on the floor too and he looks over her like he’s never seen anything like it, she knows her conscience was left at the door along with her backpack and her shotgun. 

“You’re more beautiful than I could have imagined.” Joseph lays her back down again, peppering wet kisses down her neck and over her chest, until his beard his rubbing her breast. "You're perfect." 

The tip of his tongue runs over her nipple before he sucks it into his mouth, and Alma moans and grips her hands into his hair, accidentally pulling out its elastic. He doesn’t seem to care though, more focussed on her body. Pressing her breasts together in his hands and burying his face between them so he can lick the skin there as well. 

Alma wonders how long it's been since he touched a woman, how much he is relishing this feeling skin on his again. 

“I’ve never met anyone like you before.” Tumbles helplessly out of her mouth as he kisses down her stomach to the waistline of her shorts. 

“I’ve never met anyone like you either.” He says, standing up and unfastening the belt buckle with his emblem on it. Alma watches him do it, and realises how desperately she wants him inside her - she isn’t sure she’s ever wanted someone inside her so much. 

His chest rises and falls quickly, and she can see sweat on his brow. He looks different with loose hair and his glasses off - less controlled. Joseph isn’t holding himself with stony, self-assured intensity. He’s sweating, desperate to free his erection, red in the chest - he wants to _fuck her_ , it’s written all over his face. There’s no religiosity here, no place for piety. 

A thrill goes through her that’s she’s done that to him. 

Joseph looks at her face again when his jeans are open, bright blue eyes behind messy dark hair that has fallen in his face. Fuck, fuck he’s beautiful. 

“I want you so much.” She tells him, unfastening her jean shorts. Joseph closes his eyes and seems to let the words wash over him before his fingers find her waistband, and he tugs the shorts and underwear down in one. 

Later, it might make her laugh that she lies on the table entirely naked while her boots are still on, but her mind is too occupied by the sight of him pushing down his jeans and briefs down just enough to free his cock, hard and wet with precum.

She expects him to push straight inside her, but he pauses for a moment and looks her over again, as if memorising the sight of her. Alma feels like she must turn red all over, entirely naked and knees open for him. 

“Joseph…” She says, eyes closing under his scrutiny, feeling like she is vibrating. He gently touches between her lips, feeling how slick she is, carefully working two fingers inside of her as if to check her readiness. Though appreciating his consideration, the feeling is a frustrating tease that makes her feel like she's been set alight. 

Alma grabs his wrist and pulls it away from her pussy, before tugging him so he is lying over her and she can feel his cock press against her clit. Joseph lets out a pleasured hiss and moves his hips against her, teasing with the silky underside of him. 

“Just fuck me Joseph.” She whines impatiently, almost lightheaded with anticipation and arousal.

Joseph reaches up a hand and it finds her jaw, holding it just gently and getting her to look him in the eye, nose to nose. He adjusts his hips and slips inside her all the way in one fluid motion, making her moan against his mouth and struggle to not close her eyes with the pleasure of it. 

He gasps, pulling almost all the way out before pushing back in again, hitting it just right. 

“Oh, fuck.” Her head falls back against the wood of the table, and he presses his face into the side of her neck as he builds up a quick, frantic rhythm. No time to think, no time to pretend to reconsider. They both want this, they both need this.

Alma feels like this is what has needed to happen all along, because he makes her so _emotional_ : angry and sad and turned on and frustrated and heartbroken and confused. Now they can get it out, they can both physically express everything that's been impossible to say with words, they can purge it from their systems and finally move forward.

And it feels so good. It’s all too much, the feeling of his tattooed chest against hers, how perfectly his cock seems to stretch her just right and brush up against her G spot over and over, the delight that goes through her at the desperate sounds he makes against her skin. 

Quickly, she feels herself hurtling towards an orgasm, and all she can do is dig one boot into the table and the other the back of his thigh. It’s a good thing the cabin is remote, because her moans can probably be heard from outside, too far gone to care. 

The fingers of one hand grasp his back, she feels the raised skin of the many scars there, and the other weaves into the softness of his hair and pulls just a little bit, every part of her just wanting to grasp at and consume him. 

He pulls back to look at her face again, never relenting in his thrusting. 

“You feel so good,” he murmurs against her lips, “God made you for me.”

Any other time that would scare her, and she would tell him to shut up and stop being ridiculous. But in this context it makes a thrill go through her, fresh wetness gushing around him and driving her closer to the edge. She's too far gone to think. 

“Don’t stop.” She gasps, feeling the orgasm build low.

“I won’t.” He groans against her lips and kisses her, wet and desperate, before pressing their foreheads together and giving it to her even faster.

“Ah!” She calls out, holding onto him like a life raft as the orgasm swells inside of her, threatening to break at any moment. He reangles his hips so he is pressing deeper, his hands both finding her ass to pull her closer to the edge of the table until she almost feels like she will fall off. 

It’s worth it though, to feel his cock hit even deeper and his pubic bone grind rhythmically into her clit, perfectly working it out of her. 

“Yes, yes, yes, yes.” She chants between her teeth, eyes slipping shut and back arching as the orgasm crests and washes over her, taking her breath and making her feel dizzy with the absolute euphoria of it. She hears Joseph groan with pleasure, somewhere in the distance, as heat explodes through her and makes her clench and unclench around his cock. If it hurts him when she grips his forearms and digs her nails into his skin, he doesn't let on. 

It’s hard to tell what he’s saying, over her own heartbeat in her ears and the obscene creak of the table, but she hears, ‘beautiful’ and ‘perfect’ and ‘heaven.’

He never stops fucking her, pressing his upper half over her tight and dragging it out for so long she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to speak ever again. 

“Joseph, fuck.” She whines desperately. “So good, oh my god.”

Joseph’s mouth is at her ear, he bites her earlobe just hard enough that she feels a little thrill from it. 

“Can I cum inside you?” He murmurs, voice stretched and desperate his hands looping under her shoulders to grip them tight, as if he can’t get her close enough to him or deep enough in her. 

_‘No, no, no, no, say no.’_

“Yeah,” she moans, gripping his hair tight in her hand again, “fill me with it.”

The words seem enough to tip him over the edge; he snaps his hips into her hard with a loud groan in her ear and she feels him spill inside of her copiously, thrusting weak and messy while he empties himself and shakes as much as she had been. 

“Fuck yeah.” He groans, ineloquently, voice rough and delightfully masculine, his accent especially thick. His voice and the feeling of his pleasure make her cum again, the feeling taking her by surprise and making her quiver from hypersensitivity. 

It makes him let out a shaky, weak noise from his throat, panting against her neck, his muscles relaxing like a snapped elastic band. She’s still holding his hair, but her grip loosens; she catches her breath with his weight on top of her, and she can feel his heart beating hard against her chest. 

Her knees fall open at either side of him, limbs like jelly, suddenly realising how incredibly hot and sweaty they both are. Alma finds her fingers stroking his back and when their twitching starts to subside he lifts his head to look at her.

Joseph looks like a different person like this. There is a high flush on his cheeks and a bead of sweat on his brow, his hair falls over one eye, and she lifts a hand to move it away from his face. 

“I-” She doesn’t even know what she starts to say, he leans down and kisses her, softer than before, and his thumb strokes her cheekbone. 

“I knew this would happen.” He says gently.

That’s what finally gives her pause, watching him looking at her reverently, like she has suddenly sprouted a halo around her head. She blinks and wets her lips, an uncomfortable feeling washing through her stomach. Her thigh starts to cramp. 

“No, you didn’t.” She says, and nudges his chest with her hands enough to get him to pull out of her and give her some space. 

“I knew God sent you to me for a reason.” He says. Now his head is clearer, his certainty is back, and he sounds like he did every other time they talked. Joseph tucks himself into his jeans and fastens them up, though leaves his belt hanging open. "I knew He had a plan for us." 

He’s not making it any better. Alma feels the crushing realisation that he can’t just let it be what it was, he _has_ to make it part of some divine plan. Did he even want her? Or were voices in his head telling him he was supposed to do it?

Alma doesn’t respond to him, she finds her shorts and underwear on the ground and puts them on quickly, the warm air feeling suddenly suffocating and humid. She absolutely has to leave.

“Alma.” He says, trying to get her attention. She isn’t sure what to say, again, her mind is all over the place. She feels his cum leak into her underwear.

 _‘Idiot, idiot, idiot.’_ She wants to scream at herself.

“I came here to arrest you, Joseph.” Alma says, glancing up at where he’s still sitting on the dining room table looking dishevelled. “God didn’t fucking bring me here, the US government did… Jesus, fuck.” 

She puts her bra on with haste, clasping it wrong a couple of times and groaning in frustration.

“Why are you angry?” He asks, and he’s actually asking, not in that way where he thinks he already knows the answer. The control in his voice that still remains just makes her feel more hurt - it makes her miss the way he _just_ was, so _real_ and raw. 

“I’m - I-” Articulation isn’t her strong suit after a mindblowing orgasm at the best of times. “I’m just disappointed…” She pulls her shirt back on and moves her hair out of her face. “I thought - I thought we were both just -” 

Alma grunts again and tries to collect herself.

“I thought we were two people following a dumb impulse and making each other feel good. I thought I was connecting with _you_ , just you.” She says, shaking her head and starting to feel a little sick. The taste of his mouth is still in hers. 

“You were.” He says, and there’s a sadness in his voice. 

“No.” She says. “No, you’ve twisted into some kind of justification for lusting after me. Like it’s fine that you wanted to fuck me as long as there’s a religious explanation for it. As long as you _‘knew it was going to happen’_ all along, then it’s fine.”

Alma looks at him, expecting an argument, but doesn’t get one. She feels like an idiot, as well as a traitor. 

“Stop pretending you know what I’m going to do, because you don’t.” She says firmly, and heads for the door. “Just pretend this never fucking happened and I’ll do the same.”

Alma leaves before he can speak, slamming the door shut behind her and picking up her backpack where it sits by the door. As soon as she’s off the porch, she runs, because she doesn’t want him to follow her, she doesn’t know how she can even look at him now.

Making her way through the trees, she feels tears prick her eyes, but she manages to hold them back until she gets to the road and where she’d parked her truck. As soon as she gets inside and turns on the engine, they break; she finds herself holding the steering wheel and crying. A prickly heat spreads over her chest and neck where his beard had rubbed, and she can still feel twitches between her legs and where his fingers had pressed into her thigh. 

It would have been one thing to have fucked him. She would have felt guilty about it, sure, she would have hidden it from her friends at any cost, but she could have dealt with it and let it go. Him doing _that_ though, acting like there was some deeper meaning to it, acting like he’d _known_. She’s sick of it. She’s sick of his pretence of omniscience. 

And she’s _scared._ Scared of the way he had looked at her while he had been inside of her. There had been softness in his eyes, the intensity had still been there, but quietened into something more gentle and less penetrative. With a sick feeling of realisation, she knows what it is that frightens her so much about it. She turns on the engine and blasts the AC, as if speeding away from the area will make it not have happened.

But she is well aware that she can't drive away from her thoughts, and the only one that rings incessantly round her head is that Joseph had looked at her like he loved her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew...
> 
> ... Thoughts?


End file.
